Arcane shot works, so shield slam would work. As far as I can tell, the explosion seems to have to be actively triggered by the fiend, and they seem to respond to regular threat rules. Try it and get back to us!
Arcane shot works, so shield slam would work. As far as I can tell, the explosion seems to have to be actively triggered by the fiend, and they seem to respond to regular threat rules. Try it and get back to us!
I believe they have to actually reach some distance (melee? 8yds?) from their target in order to explode normally, though the range and how they choose targets isn't readily apparent (probably because we try to get rid of them so quickly). I've been able to purge skulls that seem to be next to people without them going off and I've seen them SSed too.
They might just have a period after they spawn where they can't activate it due to proximity, though. Usually they aren't alive long enough to test the exact method of their targetting, but it appears to be global threat if the P1 versions are any indication.
Honestly SS seems like a terrible idea to rely upon for dispelling, but if one pops next to you then by all means...
Hitting P2 regularly now, getting in some low %ages before the healing kinda breaks down. Is there any truth to the rumour that spreading out stops Negative Energy from bouncing as much? As spreading can really reduce Chain Heals effectiveness.
This is not a wise idea, since if you're close enough to shield slam it, it's close enough to explode, which hits the entire raid.
Shield slam works. I tested it on a wipe last night. However, what Snowy said: This is a BAD IDEA. Caps for emphasis. :P
The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning. - Mark Twain
I've never even heard that rumor, but it doesn't sound true. However, we spread out anyway, but the reason we spread out is for the gravity balls. Those (along with skulls) are the only things that make this phase difficult, if you just had brutallus conditions where nobody had to move and it was a straight burn, the dps requirement would be a complete joke and it would be near impossible to wipe in phase2 unless it was to a dark fiend. If you have a clump of 10 people and a gravity ball is moving towards you, your dps is going to get screwed. If people get hit by it, you're going to lose a lot of dps, but even if everyone dodges it effectively that's still a lot of movement and results in a loss of dps.
We were wiping a lot in phase2 to what seemed like a dps problem, because in phase1 our whole raid clumps near the door. We only have 6 people go to the far side. This resulted in massive clumping, and then our entire raid getting raped by gravity balls in phase2 and then wiping because we thought our dps was awful. Then we assigned groups to north south east and west (fifth group being melee) and killed him within like two attempts. So you definitely still want to spread.
Hitting P2 regularly now, getting in some low %ages before the healing kinda breaks down. Is there any truth to the rumour that spreading out stops Negative Energy from bouncing as much? As spreading can really reduce Chain Heals effectiveness.
I'd like to know for sure as well.
Looking at the negative energy damage from Entropius, it looks pretty consistent from attempt to attempt, so personally, I don't think spreading out affects anynthing (other than making it easier to avoid orbs and fiends).
We've gotten two M'uru kills so far, but we are struggling for repeat kills. I think we have a few fundamental flaws in our strategy.
P1, we've got down pretty solid, but maybe 3 or 4 attempts a night (out of 20-25 attempts) our sentinel tank will die. The thing is I don't know how to stop it.
I'm healing the sentinel tank.. The void spawn is being tanked by a prot pally, who is being healed by a resto druid. That resto druid is also responsible for keeping hots on the sentinel tank.
The part where our strat differs (and problems occur) is that the sentinel tank will always drag the sentinel onto the prot pally asap, so he's always getting hit by shadowbolts. Thus, when the locks go to seed, they are seeding two packs of void spawn, the sentinel, and the edge seeds are hitting M'uru.
In this situation, the sentinel tank is taking almost as much damage from the void spawn as he from the sentinel, and it is not uncommon for the tank to spike 15k+ dmg between heals. The worst part is that the prot pally is also taking his peak damage (two packs of void spawn) in addition to sentinel pulse damage, so my support is also at its lowest.
If the tank takes 3-4 consecutive hits, its a wipe, but the benefit of this is that P1 usually only lasts about 5min.
P2 is another problem. On our two killshots, the healing seemed pretty easy. Our first kill only had two people dead when Entropius died. Other than the two killshots, we've had one .3% wipe (we were literally about 9k hp away Wow Web Stats), but otherwise our p2 attempts seem to fizzle out in the 15-30% range where we have too many people dropping from random damage.
We've tried multiple kiting paths, spreading out, clumping up, ect, but we can't seem to pinpoint what made those two killshots (Wow Web Stats, Wow Web Stats)) seem so effortless.
Last edited by ionlylooklazy : 06/19/08 at 3:42 PM.
If I had to guess I would say the difference would be the gravity balls. Like I said in my earlier post, if these didn't exist the dps requirement on this fight would be a complete joke. Nobody would really have to move except for void zones, and the boss would die in like 60 seconds. We kill him pretty comfortably under normal circumstances, you just have to be able to dodge the gravity balls. Sometimes people decide not to go to their phase2 spots, then like 10 people get thrown around in the same gravity ball, and we end up wiping at like 10%. Communication on vent helps a lot, people yelling "one coming for the melee" so your tank can move him, or "one coming for group 5, move guys" or just calling out names of people that should move to dodge it. If you get unlucky it can chain throw you for like 10 seconds at a time. Just for a point of reference, if you are clumped and it catches 4 people all doing 2200 dps for 10 seconds, that's about 4% of the bosses hp. Now if you assume this happens 4 times during your phase 2, that's 16%. Also factor in that it causes a ridiculous amount of damage to get hit with them, and overloads raid healing resulting in deaths, and theres your 15-30%.
Additionally, as more and more people die, raid healing becomes more difficult because the negative energy is less spread (less targets for it to hit) which will result in a domino effect within your raid.
Try 2 your raid got hit by 65 ticks of the gravity balls. Looks like your melee got raped.
Try 8 your raid got hit by 90 ticks. Pretty bad.
Try 22 your raid got hit by 16 ticks. Not a coincidence.
Does any other guild solely use a prot pally to tank the void sentinel and void spawns? We have one very well geared prot pally and we use this strat but we have not yet achieved a kill. We use 6 healers: 2 raid healers 2 on each tank and 2 on the prot pally. I play a resto shaman healing the prot pally and use grounding totem for each void blast. Since we have implemented this strategy our prot pally has almost never died nor has our tanks on each side. We mostly get the typical screw ups (dark fiend missed, loose mobs, bad transitions, etc). We have made it to phase 2 several times. The thing about using a prot pally to tank both is that we need 4 hunters in the raid and a MD to be used for every sentinel. If the sentinel is on the opposite side of the room this can be up to 15 seconds of downtime for hunters. So where we save a slot by using one less tank, we also need a 5th dps on one side. I am just curious if other people are using this strategy effectively? Have you found a way to do it without the need of so many misdirects? It is impossible for the pally to move around since he has all the voids on him.
The part where our strat differs (and problems occur) is that the sentinel tank will always drag the sentinel onto the prot pally asap, so he's always getting hit by shadowbolts. Thus, when the locks go to seed, they are seeding two packs of void spawn, the sentinel, and the edge seeds are hitting M'uru.
In this situation, the sentinel tank is taking almost as much damage from the void spawn as he from the sentinel, and it is not uncommon for the tank to spike 15k+ dmg between heals. The worst part is that the prot pally is also taking his peak damage (two packs of void spawn) in addition to sentinel pulse damage, so my support is also at its lowest.
If the tank takes 3-4 consecutive hits, its a wipe, but the benefit of this is that P1 usually only lasts about 5min.
How much Shadow Resist does your Sentinel tank wear? Ours is wearing about 200 and we just got to phase 2 after starting to tank Sentinels and spawns on top of each other.
How much Shadow Resist does your Sentinel tank wear? Ours is wearing about 200 and we just got to phase 2 after starting to tank Sentinels and spawns on top of each other.
He wears around 220 I think. Neck, cloak, boots, priest buff, and blood elf racial.
How do you handle the healing on the void spawn tank and the sentinel tank?
Hitting P2 regularly now, getting in some low %ages before the healing kinda breaks down. Is there any truth to the rumour that spreading out stops Negative Energy from bouncing as much? As spreading can really reduce Chain Heals effectiveness.
Negative Energy chains off the initial target to 2 additional targets. It has a range limitation on the hop - it's possible for a Negative Energy to be unable to chain (I saw this with my own eyes, and in the logs) so, spreading out does help. You can easily read NE chains in WWS.
Further WWS examination should show you that as phase 2 progresses, the number of initial targets chosen for NE will increase. It starts off with 2 initial targets, slowly increases to 3, then more rapidly 4, and it goes downhill from there. The damage doesn't increase (2k/1k/500), the number of hops off each initial target (+2) doesn't increase, it just picks additional targets with increasing speed as time goes on - that's your "enrage". Spreading out will mitigate it for a while. You have to exploit the early, two NE target part of Entropius lifespan to do as much damage as possible before the Negative Energy really gets going. We run melee heavy, for what it's worth I use death wish and recklessness very early and chain heals are really good for the melee that can't spread out.
He wears around 220 I think. Neck, cloak, boots, priest buff, and blood elf racial.
How do you handle the healing on the void spawn tank and the sentinel tank?
I used to wear SR when I tanked Sentinels because, like you guys, I bring the Sentinel to the Prot Paladin with Void Spawns right away and tank him there. That was when I wasn't tanking P2 though. Now I wear zero and we put two healers on me. Generally it is a Priest and Shaman, Shaman does raid when not needed on me. However, this week due to make up we did fine with 2 Holy Paladins on me.
I've died before but that hasn't happened in a real long time and was far fewer than the numbers you're listing. We do 6 or 7 healers, 4 tanks, to give you an idea.
To the comment about Shield Slamming Dark Fiends in phase2: Execute. You'll do far more damage sub-20% alone than the "help" you'll do if you hit the dirt trying to dispel a Dark Fiend. Not to mention others.
Does any other guild solely use a prot pally to tank the void sentinel and void spawns? We have one very well geared prot pally and we use this strat but we have not yet achieved a kill. We use 6 healers: 2 raid healers 2 on each tank and 2 on the prot pally. I play a resto shaman healing the prot pally and use grounding totem for each void blast. Since we have implemented this strategy our prot pally has almost never died nor has our tanks on each side. We mostly get the typical screw ups (dark fiend missed, loose mobs, bad transitions, etc). We have made it to phase 2 several times. The thing about using a prot pally to tank both is that we need 4 hunters in the raid and a MD to be used for every sentinel. If the sentinel is on the opposite side of the room this can be up to 15 seconds of downtime for hunters. So where we save a slot by using one less tank, we also need a 5th dps on one side. I am just curious if other people are using this strategy effectively? Have you found a way to do it without the need of so many misdirects? It is impossible for the pally to move around since he has all the voids on him.
Yes, we do. To address the points/questions in your post:
- We also use 6 healers. 2 healers on the pally tank plus a grounding from a different shaman. 1 healer per side tank, and 2 chain healers. The chain healer on each side also heal the mage tank (a hunter on the hunter side, and whatever melee on the melee side). We dont sheep.
- We have 4 hunters in the raid, but thats because we always do anyway. 4 is not needed. You can use 3, and have a 1/16 chance of not having MD up. In that case, the pally Exercises and/or a hunter manually drags the Void to him. Both can get ugly, but it can work. Also, 15 seconds to MD sounds like a very long time. Assuming its at the far end of the room:
-- MD called, still dpsing for a few seconds, no need to run right away, it takes 6 or so seconds to spawn.
0- started to run, dps loss starts now. MD cast during this time.
2- in range of furthest spawn location, spam clicking waiting for spawn to land.
3- spawn landed, arcane shot fired.
4.5- multi-shot and autoshot landed.
5- start running back, targetlasttarget.
7- back in dps group spot, dpsing.
Most of the spawn locations, you dont need to move at all.
- The hunter side only needs the 4 hunters. Sure it varies a bit depending on if you need to MD, but we range from ~3 seconds spare to ~10 seconds spare. 10 seconds doesnt sound like much, but it feels like a very long time between waves, and its a large chunk of Muru's HP too. (note, this is assuming GoA/SoE, and Sunder Armor on the Bezerkers). A possible reason why you're behind without 5 dps is because you're hunters are MDing when not needed, or taking to long to MD when they do.
Last night we went with sheeping one Berserker and I would tank the other Berserker while we would nuke the Fury mage right off the start and it didn't go smooth as I thought it would. I am not sure if tanking all three would work because I was spiking a lot on the two adds itself and those Berserker hit pretty hard. Also, I hate how the adds come in past the "invisable wall" at different times, so you can't just pick them up right away.
Last night we went with sheeping one Berserker and I would tank the other Berserker while we would nuke the Fury mage right off the start and it didn't go smooth as I thought it would. I am not sure if tanking all three would work because I was spiking a lot on the two adds itself and those Berserker hit pretty hard. Also, I hate how the adds come in past the "invisable wall" at different times, so you can't just pick them up right away.
The 'tanking all 3' is actually the strategy we use on our feral tank side, while on the warrior side we baby him with CC. Are you gemmed out for avoidance? What's the make-up of your DPS? Feral tank basically uses his group that we custom fit with 2 rogues, a warrior and enhancement shaman. Between the enhancement shaman (me) ESing fireballs, purging the instant buff and the rogue stuns/kicks, there's only the 2 berserkers giving damage. If you gem for avoidance, this is almost laughable damage for healing, as far as I can tell.
The 'tanking all 3' is actually the strategy we use on our feral tank side, while on the warrior side we baby him with CC. Are you gemmed out for avoidance? What's the make-up of your DPS? Feral tank basically uses his group that we custom fit with 2 rogues, a warrior and enhancement shaman. Between the enhancement shaman (me) ESing fireballs, purging the instant buff and the rogue stuns/kicks, there's only the 2 berserkers giving damage. If you gem for avoidance, this is almost laughable damage for healing, as far as I can tell.
I've got multiple sets with agi and stam gems, and I was playing around with the trinkets. Using the pocket watch helped but we were still about 30% HP short on the last add till the next wave spawned. I've got a dps warrior, ret pal, rogue, and a mage helping me but I seriously think it didn't work because he probably spent more time sheeping the mage than dpsing. Also, it's quite easy to move the Mage away from the sheep and my swipe broke it a few times. That leads to more problem with me chasing the sheep and getting aggro on it and it turns in to a mess.
Edit*
Our WWS aren't up yet from last night, or I'd post them. To be honest the rogues were hitting for around 2.5k-3.8k phyical damage, which doesn't seem that bad at all consdering armor cap vs level 71 is easy to obtain as a feral druid. However, I did die from a 8-9k fire damage from the mage, which spiked me to death on some of our wipes.
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
I think I am going to respec and go with 5/5 FA next time, improved demo roar should help a lot considering I don't have any one debuffing them for me. Any thoughts?
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
I think I am going to respec and go with 5/5 FA next time, improved demo roar should help a lot considering I don't have any one debuffing them for me. Any thoughts?
Is there any particular reason your warrior can't use 2 GCDs for demo/tc? I would highly recommend using shadowmoon insignia + Commendation for this fight assuming you have both. Shadowmoon provides alot of passive avoidance and a buffer if you see a fireball getting through if interupts/bash are down, Commendation is just nice because it helps cope with flurry (It's not out of the ordinary to dip below the trinkets threshold at least once per wave). I wouldn't bother sheeping so as long as you can keep up with the aoe threat (ww mainly for your strat) on 3 mobs.
Last night we went with sheeping one Berserker and I would tank the other Berserker while we would nuke the Fury mage right off the start and it didn't go smooth as I thought it would. I am not sure if tanking all three would work because I was spiking a lot on the two adds itself and those Berserker hit pretty hard. Also, I hate how the adds come in past the "invisable wall" at different times, so you can't just pick them up right away.
How were you handling the initial nuke on the fury mage? SOP here is for the DPS warrior to "pick it up", disarm it, and 2H tank it while the rest of your DPS keeps it spell locked and stuns it periodically (you can't do a full stun lock, but the disarm is pretty key here). On later waves, you'll have to start the mage off with stuns so your disarm CD is up by the time your DPS actively "tanks" it.
Alternatively, as suggested, you can just tank all three mobs.
Originally Posted by monster
I've got multiple sets with agi and stam gems, and I was playing around with the trinkets. Using the pocket watch helped but we were still about 30% HP short on the last add till the next wave spawned. I've got a dps warrior, ret pal, rogue, and a mage helping me but I seriously think it didn't work because he probably spent more time sheeping the mage than dpsing. Also, it's quite easy to move the Mage away from the sheep and my swipe broke it a few times. That leads to more problem with me chasing the sheep and getting aggro on it and it turns in to a mess.
The polymorph is more of a warrior thing, as warriors have harder times absorbing berserkers, and there happens to be two of them at any given time. I wouldn't really bother with it as a feral, as the berserkers are a smaller threat to you due to your armor cap and higher avoidance. You WILL eat a large manitude of damage, and the WWS will indicate such - however, your spikes will typically be smoother, provided you're geared for avoidance and hitting the easy armor cap, and thus very healable.
The main danger to ferals (which incidentally, is the smaller danger for warriors) is the fury mage. If you don't want to take the above approach, you simply tank all three and ensure the fury mage gets interrupted periodically and is purged/spell stolen at all times. This cuts a significant danger from you, leaving the double zerker/2xFlurry scenario as your only big danger, and this is mostly mitigated by a bash or a cheap shot.
Have your arms warrior do debuffs - he's going to be sort of aggro limited in the beginning of the wave anyway, prior to unleashing his fury on all three mobs (another advantage of tanking all three, btw).
I kinda disagree about warrior tanks. On this fight avoidance shines for warriors since rage isnt really an issue (2 fast hitting dual wielders leave plenty of rage even with full avoidance gear, and warriors have no problems getting to feral avoidance levels. I have around 43% dodge/25% parry unbuffed on this fight +9% from extra defense and 5% base miss. Thats over 80% avoidance without any buffs. That + 450 or so shield block (on every attack) + defensive stance, seem to outperform anything druids can put for this fight. I think i have pretty close to what i use on M'uru in armory.
I completely agree with Shha, I've seen warriors taking far far less damage than druids. Even a 15 stam gemmed warrior can get above 80% avoidance after you factor in buffs, agi pot, agi food, grace of air, kings, etc. From everything I've seen warriors have much higher avoidance (I've never seen a druid over 80% avoidance, feel free to prove me wrong with a wws though), and also take less damage per hit because these are fast hitting dual wielding mobs. Any attack that's not avoided is going to be blocked, and the block value is going to knock off enough to make you get hit for less damage per hit than a druid, even though they're armor capped. Factor in inspiration, lower armor cap for lower level mobs, and spell reflect, and I'd say warrior far outshine druids for doorway tanking.
Also warriors can debuff their own mobs, whereas a druid needs to have a dps warrior on his side using thunderclap at least, and probably also imp demo shout to even compete with warriors on damage taken.
The main issue here is the ability to shield block. Originally with me tanking both Zerkers and the mage, but killing the mage first, I was taking almost double the dmg of our warrior tank. Now with using the same strat (Poly 1 zerker, kill zerker, kill poly, kill mage) I take less dmg (albeit very little less) than our warrior tank. We do not use a dps warrior on my side for tclap. We use 3 hunters + ele shaman as dps on my side while the other side uses 2 rogues enh shammy and dps war.
You can't really compare the dmg taken from a druid tanking 2 fast hitting melee mobs + the mage vs having a warrior getting a poly etc. Its just not the same amount of incoming attacks.
Edit: Here's an example of a friend's guild who uses almost the exact same dps but they do not poly a Zerker on the druid's side. As you can see the druid takes close to 150k more dmg than the warrior while taking over double the number of incoming attacks from the Zerkers.
After having talked with a few guilds about how they deal with the adds, it seems that there isn't one best strategy to use. Some guilds have players who can deal with other things, while others can't. Coming up with something your raid can handle and perfecting it was what we had to do and probably what most guilds did as well.
For us healing the Druid with 2 Zerkers was pretty simple. For others they needed a sheep or the Druid would get gibbed.
I have solo healed our Warriors side (never has a bloom stack) on a Shaman, and Chain Heal 4 was enough to keep the tank+melee safe. Was very easy and mindless CH spam. I healed our Sent tank (has a bloom if we have our Druids online) on my Paladin and it's very simple, you preheal max rank spam, even a downranked (9) HL and he should never die. Healing the Druid tanking two zerkers (with blooms if we have our Resto Druids online, otherwise Priest support) on my Paladin was probably the hardest job due to the random spikes he would get. Even then though, it's repeatable as long as you don't zone out.
- Warrior with a sheep can be healed by 1 healer.
- Sent Warrior Tank can be solo healed by a Paladin (haven't tried with a Shaman/Priest yet) with an SPriest. I don't think hots are needed, but are welcomed of course.
- Druid without a sheep can be healed with support, SPriest not really needed. I would assume a Druid with a sheep is trivial to keep alive. If melee on that side, chain heal should be used. If ranged (like we use on that side) a single target healer like a Paladin seems best. The raid healing (I played this role too this week) Shaman can chain through the Ranged camp (Hunters/Ele Shaman) tanking the Mage.
- Spawn tank can be solo'd by a healer preferably a Druid.
06/18/08, 2:30 AM
