Trolling

I don't really have a good start for this, but there is definately some good stuff to post! Lets get it rolling.


I suppose I can start with my guilds experiences on this fight up to this point.

Phase 1 is easily doable after a couple pulls of learning. Time stuns and make sure people don't do anything stupid. (I assume there isnt much discussion needed for that).

Phase 2 and beyond is where the actual complexity starts as far as I can see. So far we're able to get to 1 bomb with everyone alive, and we kind of fail at this point. We haven't been able to excactly pin point why we are beginning to lose at this point. People inevitabely die, but it isnt due to people not being protected from bomb. Its due to raid dmg or being bursted down. How are other guilds managing the potential burst right before, and right after the collapse for bomb? Is there an amazing way to time your burn on KJ, protection potions required, we have not been able to figure it out. So far we have tried burning KJ to 85% with about 10s left on our bloom, which usually ends up off setting our dart and bloom so less burst, and we get bloom during a bomb collapse less often.


I don't really know what to post, but from guilds seeing much more success, what are some of the guiding principles you guys use?

I just spam chain heal until the mobs HP reach 0.

 

Krazen

There are 3 possibilities I see:

1. Adds burst down a healer before they are tanked.
2. People are chaining fire blooms on the collapse.
3. Orbs are spawning as you collapse, and getting around the circle, firing at your dps. This is probably the most likely.

Where are you positioning your raid, or more specifically, the center of your raid?

 

Trolling

We currently position from about 10 o clock to 3 o clock when looking from the bottom of the room. Something similar to this.


http://img68.imageshack.us/img68/8359/kj2oo8.png


We generally collapse right in the middle of melee behind KJ. This is a small video showing a kind of fluke death (watch the orc hunter die on the right of the char in the video lol). It does display our average positioning though. Even though it seems some people aren't standing all on one spot to receive breath. Definately gonna have to make a note of that.

Vreel > Education > KJ bomb bubble

The burst we receive doesn't actually work out too bad in that video.

It does appear orbs are coming up right as we leave the bubbles often. I suppose that is always made 100% priority at that point? Have you guys figured out any awesome tricks to deal with multiple orbs? Sweet spot positioning?

I just spam chain heal until the mobs HP reach 0.

 

dssurge

We've been stuck on this encounter post-55% and I think this encounter brings out the absolute worst in people. Assuming folks don't die to their own stupidity, getting RNG-raped by collapsed Flame Dart and Fire Bloom is un-necessary. I really hope the decide to put a 1-2 second grace period on Darkness in the sub-patch being released shortly.

We've pretty much given up trying to work around the completely random raid-nukes. The fight is more frustrating than challenging for us at this point. Every good attempt we have gets shit all over by either Meteors on the collapse point because we need to put the second shield up earlier than we would have liked, or by some act of god that gives 5/7 of our melee Fire Bloom.

The fight itself isn't very complex, the uncontrollable elements of the encounter are certainly bringing out the worst in our attendance and patience though.

 

Foofer

Our first few kills were fine, but these last couple weeks we had trouble repeating our kill due to what was mentioned above - flame darts right after an explosion, fire bloom right before or after an explosion, or the dreaded fire bloom during the explosion cast. Is there really no way around this? Has anyone had luck bringing him to certain %'s at certain times?

 

Trouble

I admit there are some you-lose scenarios with the fight that can be frustrating, but we've found them to happen a relatively small percentage of the time. Meteors on the bubble are fine if you you come up with a plan for it. Most pre and post shield blooms are fine although the very, very late blooms are hard to work about. Haven't ever seen a dart timer that should cause an instant wipe on shield collapse. If your strat involves collapsing when dragon first spawns then there can be timing issues where a bloom or dart will insta-wipe you and there's no way to prevent it, but it's rare.

 

◊ Praetorian

Darts/Bloom right after an explosion are fine if you put up the shield a bit late, basically. If the shield lasts 2-3sec after Darkness because it was put up late, then you can wait at the edge of the shield a split second for K'J's first action after Darkness. If it's Bloom or Darts, then hey, you're all safe, and you basically avoid the attack entirely. Great. If it's anything else (LL, Flay) then you can use those couple of seconds to spread safely. This doesn't work on the first Darkness of each phase, though, when you probably want a post-shield Haste breath and you don't want a late shield in that case. At least it's something, though.

And yes, the ability timers on this fight very much can lead to drastically varying levels of difficulty.

Kil'Jaeden can make Orbs after Darkness, you can have Bloom expire as you begin to collapse for Darkness and not be recast, you can have dragon orb activations on the near side with your raid, you can have all shaman/druid/rogue/etc. adds, and so forth.

Or he can make Orbs right before Darkness, put up fresh Blooms right as your raid begins to collapse for Darkness, orb activations on the opposite side, all priest/hunter/mage/etc. adds.

The latter "version" is insanely hard. The former isn't too bad once you've got all the tactics down.

 

Krazen

I presume you mean orbs spawning as your enter the bubble, as you should have no problems running back into position and DPSing them down if they spawn as your leave (especially with only 2 of them). If they spawn as you enter, try to Dot up as many as you can as you move and focus on getting at least 1 down.

Orbs always have to be 100% priority for your ranged. Your melee are your top DPS on KJ, and the adds don't do a whole lot of damage and don't need to die that quickly (except for warriors, really).

Your positioning looks alrite from your drawing. Just execute; do better at getting everyone the haste breath so they can get back into position faster.


On another note, how often do people experience shield malfunctions on this fight? Latency obviously means you can't hop in with .2 seconds left on the cast, but I've seen quite a few occasions where someone in the middle of the bubble for a good 2-3 seconds takes the 50k.

 

Tunch

I've seen some pretty wonky shield malfunctions. Even from people who routinely get in well before the darkness cast, and who strafe and juke around once they're in there to help ensure a server-side positioning update. In fact, just 15 minutes ago, I myself got into the shield with 3 seconds to go on the cast. My hunter pet (next to me) lived through the blast, and I died. No explanation that I can think of other than screwy lag/coding issues. The fight could certainly use a bit of polish to fix the "haha you lose" aspect of certain ability combos too.

 

Vrakk

How do people deal with shield orbs? I don't have data to support this, but the orbs seem to have the most potential for overall raid damage if they aren't dealt with quickly. It seems a lot of our wipes are due to the multiple orb spawns. One orb always dies, but pretty often the second orb will get out of range of our ranged dps, and do a full semi circle before it comes back in range.

What classes are people assigning to kill orbs? How many DPS does it take to deal with the 2 and 3 orb spawns consistently? What about orbs that spawn as your raid is running back into position after a bomb?

 

◊ Praetorian

All ranged classes, period. Make sure spriests get DoTs on them at least, so that if they do sneak OOR, the DoTs finish them. They're a huge threat and can do insane DPS to melee when they only have a few people in range.

If you watch my K'J video from my PoV I even frost shock and chain lightning orbs from time to time, when I don't have urgent healing to do.

 

Panzzzer

For those people that talk about "malefunction". After many attempts we noticed same as u, that ppl die under the shield, even tho they had the buff "shield of the blue etc" up according to grimreaper. We did wonder a long time why that is and why they get full 40k+dmg under the shield. Mostly those ppl had firebloom and came very late into the bubble to not dmg the raid before the 3-5sec timer. they were even below 2k HP and since u still get ~2,1-2,2k dmg under the shield the ppl still died there if not properly topped.

anyway, in case that somebody dies from darkness with the shieldbuff up he will recieve the full amount of dmg without the 95% protection from the shield. i think that covers many of the reasons to lose ppl while dragonbubble is up, as ppl mentioned it. so if it wasnt simply failing or lag perhabs, this could be 1 more reason. means u have to top the ppl, especially the last ppl coming into the bubble with their firebloom

 

Joy

There have been many documented cases of players being inside the bubble for many seconds (gaining and not losing the buff) and taking full damage.

Generally (or at least in my experience, we had this occur on at least 75% of attempts leading up to our kill) the player would be in the same group as the current Dragon controller.

 

Clandestine

The instant raid gib scenarios are really not as common as it is being made to sound. Any extreme-late blooms or darts are easily dealt with by a proper collapse strategy. Extreme-early darts can be dealt with on the second bubble of each phase, because you can be spread out sufficiently during the shield. Extreme-early blooms, however, will probably result in the death of a significant portion of your raid most of the time. In our experience at least, you only see extreme-early blooms maybe every 1 in 30 pulls.

Shield orbs should always be your ranged DPS top priority. When we were learning the fight we quickly discovered that at least 75% of early deaths involved shield orb damage. They can do a lot of burst DPS on your melee, who will probably not necessarily be in range of all of your healers at all times. Hunters are definitely the best at killing shield orbs quickly in our experience, but warlocks and shadow priests need to be focusing on it as well.

 

◊ Kyth

We always haste before shield for consistency.


For the orbs right at collapse for darkness: One thing that helps with those orbs is your spriests and locks zooming their camera far out and casting coa and SW:P on each orb. Locks immolate if they get in there in time.

And yes, we have all ranged except our SV hunter on the orbs. And we tracked orb damage night to night and yelled at those who were dramatically underperforming, even to the point of swapping some people out of the raid if they weren't pulling their weight on orbs.


The vast, vast majority of "malfunctions/bugs" are bad play. People will claim they were in the shield when they weren't. I've watched as someone came dashing in the shield with milliseconds to spare and then claimed with a straight face on vent "I don't know how I died, I was in there with plenty of time." Bullshit.

You enter it, the server updates your position, the buff registers... all of this has to happen with enough time before the damage hits.

We *have* had a few legit bugs. But nowhere near the level that I've seen on other threads -- unless of course you count the number of times someone claimed they had a bugged shield...

Tips for avoiding the so-called bugs:

- move in well ahead of time if you are darted and at the far edges
- strafe when you get in the shield to force a position update with the server
- if you are bloomed and waiting outside, work out with your raid (for us it's 4 seconds) how much time left on his cast before you're expected to be in the shield.

This last one was 90% of our supposed bugs. You don't watch the shield graphic to know when to come in, you watch his cast bar and plan to be in the shield with (4, 3, whatever) seconds to spare. And then you strafe.

It was easy to tell the people who were watching the graphic, they didn't move until the graphic was up and then it was a roll of the dice whether they made it in in time.

Bug do happen -- just don't let it be an excuse for the far-more-likely laxity in getting in the shield.


I'm our soul flay tank, I don't have any special low lag or low ping, and I've never ever ever been "bugged." I also watch his cast and make damn sure I'm in that shield ahead of time because if I die, we wipe.



Regarding meteors: call on vent which side of the shield people should go out, to help those who may not have noticed the ground graphic.

Officer of <Fusion>
http://www.stratfu.com/ - StratFu: Strategies, Guides, Movies, and Tips for Wrath Raiding

 

Arangom

The one thing that bugs me and my guild right now is, what exactly are the Flame Dart mechanics? I've talked to several people that have already killed Kil'Jaeden and their answers on the mechanics vary .. a lot.

What I've personally observed is the following: It seems to be totally random, how many "big" ( ~1.8k ) ticks one suffers. The animation always shows at least three impacts, but sometimes I get only one tick, sometimes multiple, we had people that definately were standing alone report to same, hasted / not hasted does not seem to make a difference either here, Standing close / in each other also does not always produce the same results.

Were currently "stacking" two people on each other, and how many "Ticks" ( ~1.8k ) we get seems to completly random ( This is actually what some people that I've talked to about this said to me, too ) and not dependent how close you stand to each other.

Then there's Flame Dart Explosion. First we thought that it does not happen, if everyone is hasted / noone that is unhasted is "in range" ( whatever that range may be ), but last night, as me and my position partner were both hasted in multiple trys and litterally standing inside each other we sometimes got "some" explosion ticks, sometimes we did not ( may be related to Netherprotection? ). Now, some of the people I've talked to said that this is just a range issue, don't stand close to each other and it won't happen, but that same person mentioned flame dart explosion being a dot, but I have never seen this.

It became painfully clear to us after last nights attempts, that we do not even understand how Flame Dart works, maybe you can share your experiences and help us learn. I suspect it won't affect our strategy that much, but it would still be damn nice to know how things work, afterall.

 

Anthraxx

2.4.3 KJ changes:
No more unlucky darts at least...

 

Dra

The only shield bug I've seen so far is when you cast the shield at exactly 5 seconds left on the darkness timer, everyone is in the shield and half the raid survives while the other half dies.

I was wondering what tanks other guilds use for Kil'jaeden. We use a feral druid for Kil'Jaeden and a protection paladin for the adds, which allows for very fast add-killing (if they're not warlock or mage adds they're down before the dragon spawns)

Edit:
To me it seems that he casts multiple "volleys" of flame darts that hit random people. If you have the haste buff you still get the damage from the flame dart, but you are immune to the slowing debuff and you will not trigger any of the aoe damage.

 

Targa-JF

Seems to be a latency problem.

Actually we are having one prot warrior and one feral druid. But this is a good point. A protection paldin should be a better choice (instead of the protection warrior). Or do I miss something?

Up to our experience you are not immune to the slowing debuff, too.

 

• Falk

No.

Anything that removes snares or gives immunity to snares will prevent the debuff from applying or clear it.

 

Targa-JF

@Falk

But if it isn't a latency problem what can we do to prevent? Where could be the problem?

Concerning the slow debuff: We experiened that people have slow and haste at once. A bug? Or is there something else needed to be considered?

 

Dra

The "bug" I described is in fact a latency problem and the only thing you can do to prevent it is cast the shield slightly later.

 

Targa-JF

@Dra

Which should be better anyway as Praetorian discriped already above:

 

• Falk

@Dra: In the strictest sense, a latency-related issue or bug implies that the delay introduced by the travel time of data between the client and server can cause wonky behavior. The issue you describe isn't a product of this delay. Shoddy coding? Probably.

Suggested workaround of changing your shield deployment timing in relation to the darkness casttime could help. Another (unrelated) thing you could try is watching out for the geometry - it's been suggested that the shield doesn't interact nicely with the elevated rings in KJ's room. If you think about Gruul and how you could stand on top of stones/wood/etc and avoid Ground Slam, this kind-of makes sense.

 

• Emn

I can't say we ever experienced anything like that. There were the few attempts when the shield would be to early, and obviously people would die from that. One thing that did seem to poke its head up a lot was just a single death of someone standing at the collapse point before the shield was even cast.

I had read somewhere else that some people think their is an issue with the group that the dragon controller is in. After looking at recount and figuring out people who died because they were to slow, we found that the deaths even with the buff, seemed to only happen to people in the controllers groups. Not exactly sure what causes this, or even if just an unlucky coincidence, but something is at play there.

We have 1 Prot Paladin picking up the reflections and then have an Arms/Fury Warrior tanking KJ. I know a lot of guilds opt to have 3 tanks, using 1 as the orb controller, but it was something we decided against.