Shelendil

The first two are true.

I'll add that there is a LoS check to Sacrolash before they attack their target. Tanking her on the ramp with the raid below they wouldn't have had time or range to despawn, but they will depsawn just as they raise their arm to attack if Lady Sacrolash has been moved out of LoS of the raid again.

Having the three people standing outside of her minimum targeting range to pull the shadow images away from the raid could possibly survive by stepping out of LoS of Sacrolash when the images reach them.

I'm not convinced their targeting is random, having seen healers destroyed one too many times by two or even three images from the same spawn. I've never seen multiple shadow images on people who would be low on aggro tables. Mostly speculation on my part regarding that.

 

spanko

Seconding this, I'm pretty sure they have normal threat mechanics, so long as you pass the line of sight check. They always go for healers when they are in LOS, and it seems like when theres multiple people in LOS but none of them are healers (melee) they go for tanks, presumably because of lifeblooms and earthshield.

 

• Whiteknight

I'm reasonably certain that such a spot does not exist inside the room. Even if you have one group on the balcony and the other group directly below them (about the furthest path for the ninjas while still being in LOS) if the ninjas don't stop and hit someone on the way they'll travel the full distance and still have about 3-4 seconds to beat on people.

In all the vids where the ninjas are despawning right before hitting the main raid clump, the ninjas stop and beat on either the tanks or the healers on the ramp before they go for the raid.

 

Setia

I guess you could use 3 warlocks in full SR who'd take a few hits then Hellfire out of the debuff. But this would only work until patch day... After that I guess it's either healers or mages with double Ice Blocks.

 

Trouble

As supporting evidence, here's a couple WWS links from our first and second week killing Shadow Twin first:

First week: Shadow Image - WWS

Zero attacks any either of the two tanks or the three people in melee (Bazz, Mokokomass, Punkrocker, Thelastrace, Barrelroll).

Second week: Shadow Image - WWS
A little bit more, but all explainable. Oark had a shadow image get on him while he was running out for a conflag. One shadowfury hits Hardcore, Barrelroll, Enervatex, Bazz. Mokokomass and Punkrocker again take zero hits from Shadow Images.

 

Natural

First: I propose that we save ourselves the time of typing the twins names and simply call them RED and BLUE.

Last night we used a relatively nice trick to make the Red-first kill much more reliable.

Our positioning
Up top:
- Blue up top, slightly away from ledge (not in LOS of raid)
- 2 tanks on center ledge
- 3 paladin healers in SR gear spread out 10+ yards apart
Below
- Raid on Red
- Warlock in curtain

The advantage of this strategy is that the raid *never* gets shadowfury because Blue is positioned outside of LOS of the raid. The disadvantage of this strategy is that the healers up top are in a world of pain. They are tasked with healing themselves and the tanks (although the tanks do receive some extra healing from below), but as the shadow debuffs stack on them it causes chaos and begins to spiral out of control.

The trick we used is to give the 3 paladins + shadowpriest a bloodlust at the 30-40 second mark. With the speedy heals, the paladins are able to recover everyone to full health and maintain control for the duration of Bloodlust. With bloodlust and DS to reset their buffs there is enough time for the raid to zerg down Red and get to phase 2 clean.

Next week we will most likely kill Blue first; however, groups having trouble with the healers up top in a similar strategy would probably benefit from a bloodlust in the healer group. As a note--we bring 5 shaman (4 resto + 1 enhance) so all of our DPS groups were already getting lust.

 

Gokey

1 warlock with nether protection can do this.

 

Setia

Hmm. Does Nether Proection dispel the debuffs, or does it only make you immune to the incoming damage (and prevent further debuffs from stacking) ?

 

• Xaviera

Is it even possible to have the raid stack in such a way, and then have the 3 people in LoS at such a distance that it takes longer than 10 seconds for the images to reach them? Maybe right at the top of the balcony, but I'd think they'd still get hit at the tail end there.

Edit: My bad, somehow I clicked on this thread and failed to notice I hadn't refreshed for hours. Like 5 other people noted this same thing.

 

Sholdak

It may be possible to put hunters up on the balcony and have them FD just before the shadow images get to them, at which point, lacking any other target, they'll go back to the raid.

 

Gokey

Immunes the incoming damage. The only way to remove debuffs is through hellfire or traditional encounter mechanics.

 

thorin5

On the note of using Hellfire to remove Shadow Touched debuffs, isn't that being changed in 2.4.2 to no longer work? If so, basing a strat around it seems like a very bad idea.

 

Gokey

Yep.

 

Madlax

Having killed them twice normal was kinda entertaining, but after spending another day on learning reversed I´d have to say it felt much more controlled.
My guild spent a lot of time on checking incoming damage, run ways and controllable elements, but we couldn't figure out a proper mechanic on the small guys.

If the above posters are correct - which I guess we can try tomorrow, then I´d second
Tank them on top of each other, have 3 high aggro casters stand on the top ledge and deal with a few thousand damage every 10 seconds. Sounds somewhat - interesting.

 

Dey

First of all, I really would like to remind everyone that hellfire cleansing Dark Touched is getting fixed next mini-patch ( WoW-Europe.com Forums -> 2.4.2 Patch notes (Update 25/04) ).

My own observation regarding the shadow images, I can tell that first week we did it with Sacrolash tanked up top, the images didn't last enough to be an annoying factor during the fight, they despawned before they reached the raid. However, next raid that wasn't the case, they were actually reaching the raid and stunning healers, so we changed the healing assignment a bit to have druids hotting tanks to allow them to survive the stun and have a solo healer standing away from raid.
Now we're using the tactic killing Alythess last, and we're still using the druid hotting tanks method since stunning is still issue here, I think it's something you have to heal through (or if you're really having issues, maybe have Free Action potion rotation going?)

Another note on Shadow Images, their Dark Strike attacks are mitigated by resistance, so buff shadow resistance.

 

Pentamorfi

Funny how each new encounter in Sunwell makes the previous one appear childish in comparison.

During our learning curve we actually bumped upon the 'right' tactic (as in, the one that eventually got us a kill) however not having enough healers that day forced us to try new approaches... which also seemed to require more healers than we had available - in short, it was a rather frustrating experience. What we did end up with was an LR style of approach - we didn't really consider killing Sacrolash first as we were much more interested in killing Alythess asap and reduce the raid damage, which was our bane for most of the time.

Basically we had 3 paladins in SR healing the MT's, a druid healing mainly the paladins, all those spaced out in order to avoid conflagrating each other and the rest of the raid bunched up near Alythess, with the warlock tanking her dancing upon the ledge.

Another thing I discovered during our multiple wipes was - Sacrolash is easily kiteable in phase 2. More than once she'd Conflag one of the tanks, Confounding blow the other and run rampant towards the casters - usually me. Now, I'd be standing at the top of the right hand ledge while she'd be tanked in the middle of the room below, so by the time she could climb up I had more than enough time to run to the upper ledge, wait a bit for her to come close, then jump down to the tanks, buying enough time for one of the tanks to recover from whichever Incapacitate effect they were under, at which point she'd lose interest in me and run back to them. Funny thing is, even if the tanks were still incapacitated, jumping down from the upper ledge would mean I'd have enough space and time to repeat my stunt . Obviously though, and depending on how healer heavy you run for this fight, that's a lot of time wasted.

This was the first fight in TBC that forced one of our enhance shamans and our retribution paladin to respec resto/holy, just so we could meet the healing requirements. I dread the day when we won't have 10, or at a push 9 well geared dedicated healers, or enough shamans for the chain heal paradise that phase 1 is, or paladins for the MT healing and shadow images 'tanking'.

In conclusion, I'm kinda dissapointed at the fact that healers are the only ones being challenged by each new encounter so far in SP. There's really nothing in Sunwell that has been 'difficult' for a competent, well geared DPS class, but on the other hand the sheer healing power required and burdens placed upon the healers seem to be all the more grave at each encounter. Once upon a time Illidari council was a raid damage nightmare, nowadays Twins make IC look like child's play, (which, considering the raid progression from BT to SP is understandable) but the difficulty level has only increased for the healers. In essence, you have to expect your healers to play more and more like small deities. This, in my humble opinion, is rather sad.

But, we've still got two encounters to go, and seeing how each end boss so far in WoW incorporates all elements and strategies that you'd use to deal with the bosses before it, I expect a Kil'jaeden fight that will be nothing short of epic, just as long as there's a balance between healing and DPS requirements and tanking duties.

 

Redux

Our guild did the reverse kill just to try and do it (extra loot ftw?), finished it tonight. I would comment on it for you, but I was only there when we did Sacrolash first. However, you are free to ask on our guild forums. We used two different strategies and positioning for the two kills. Sacrolash first is the harder of the two from my understanding, however P2 of the Sacrolash-first is cake. You kill Sacrolash and you're basically getting the loot. Myrx has a video of us doing Alythess first, I'm sure he'd be glad to share it with you.

 

• Snowy

If you're sticking with a Sacrolash-last strat, this can buy you a kill well past Enrage. Our first kill was actually basically called a wipe at 20% since she was due to enrage in 10 seconds. The fact that 20% of her life is actually not all that much compared to say, 20% of Brutallus meant that even though she was over 10% at enrage, casters were able to kite her around the ramps while others finished her off. You'll lose people eventually but it's a fairly slow process. If you see our killshot, that explains why she's on the ramp.

Benefactors' Bar, where you get free English lessons:

 

Krazen

True, but how exactly do you make encounters that challenging for dps? You have various issues of positioning and movement that dps has to do, but healers have to manage that along with doing their jobs. I found that Brutallus's enrage timer isn't at all difficult with 7 healers (although we could succeed with 8, it would probably be a post enrage kill).

Up through Felmyst, at least, there isnt much of a test of burst dps, which I suppose is something that could be done.

 

Grizlor

Well, other than Reliquary phase 2 (if you can even count that), the last fight designed in that way was C'thun.

 

Philondra

This is an interesting question that probably deserves its own thread rather than derailing this one, so I'll keep my response brief. One way that DPS classes could be challenged is by scripting encounters that gave the DPS challenges that were not strictly related to DPSing. Some (admittedly simplistic) examples include Loatheb, which tested self-reliance as much as it did strong DPS, and EoS Phase 2, in which success or failure hinges on the rogues being able to kick the right things at the right time. DPS classes have generally played utility roles that healers and tanks cannot due to other responsibilities (interrupt the heal; banish the adds; spellsteal the debuff). DPS classes can be challenged in ways other than pure DPS checks. Blizzard could implement more of these "utility checks" to help mix things up for DPS classes and challenge us in different ways.

 

Giske

The whole extra loot if you kill them in reverse is funny since the fight is significantly easier that way around. Starting to wonder if it really is a loot bug or just a reward for finding the correct way to do the fight. Seems odd in any case and would be like getting extra loot for killing Vem first in the Bug Trio.

You can also do it with less healers in reverse, our healers commented yesterday that it was doable with 9 in our current gear and probably 8 with full sunwell gear.

That being said, the mechanics of the images is really puzzling and we havent really figured them completely out yet. The things we do know are:

If you arent in LOS of Sacrolash you will never get an image after you, ever
There are two types of them, Dark Strikers and Shadowfury bombers
They seem to have a limited lifespan of 6-8 seconds
Only the Dark Strike type seems to be able to Shadowstep
If you stand within melee range (10y) of Sacrolash the images will ignore you if there are targets outside melee range
Shadow Images will always target someone without Dark Touched before they target someone with it (this is why they can change directions halfway towards someone because someone closer to them just got Dark Flame and became an eligible target)

Theres some unexplainable stuff though like having our Alythess tank pull from ranged causes the images to spawn differently than having our MT just drop off the ledge and body pulling them both. In one case you get more shadowfury type images than the other. Cant explain this one.

 

Tyrian

A small example of how to challenge DPS = Give them multiple roles. The perfect example for mages is Kalecgos, Decursing VS DPS.

We need to dps. We need to decurse. We can't do both at once. Sure , you could just ignore DPS completely to decurse (and vice versa) but thats silly, we can easily do both - and doing both correctly (especially in the middle->end phase of the fight) is a skill learnt while practising the fight. Its much more fun than encounters that equate to, 'stand here and dps boss'. This is why Kalecgos/Archimonde are two of my favourite encounters. As a mage, its very refreshing to have an added new responsibility on a boss encounter.

If this is true, it should mean (In Fusions positioning) in theory that the only target in LOS and outside of 10 yards is the Warlock Tank on Alythess? Images spawn and come to warlock tank, but in doing so now have LOS on the entire raid up top -> randomly change their fixate to the raid -> run up the ramp to the raid but despawn before reaching.

However this positioning is too precise to really pull off perfectly. With the difficulty tanks have controlling Sacrolash's position... keeping her out of LOS of the raid up on the top pillar, whilst simultaneously ensuring the Protection tanks with her below are in LOS of the healers - would be tough.