delling

As I said in the post above... it's quite important to leave the collapse spot clear, in phase 4 and 5. That way no meteors will spawn there before the Darkness at least. If people collapse early (common in the melee, or those behind the flare), you can get some meteors on the edge of the shield.

Have someone call out meteors. Make everyone leave the shield at the back, rather than the front/sides (where the majority of the players will be collapsing).

 

Bach

Atm we are using the Bigwigs timers countdown to Darkness to collapse. Those further out start moving at 5secs. Perhaps I'll ask the healers and those closer not to move in so early?

 

delling

I would certainly leave the flare spot clear until he starts casting Darkness. Your healers probably want to stand still and heal those that are collapsing anyway -- often deaths will occur as people run into the shield (as the healers are moving), or as people run out of the shield (blooms, darts, etc. as the healers are getting back into position).

That's often why strats (such as the Fusion one) place the healers very close to the collapse spot, so they have to move very little.

 

Raiste

So question about firebloom / flame dart timer when the first orb spawns. We are currently collapsing for the breaths when the orb spawn emote goes off but the timing on firebloom / flamedart seems so random. Looking at some of the kill videos raids collapse and spread back out with about 5-8 secs left on the BW flame dart timer and although we do the same, sometimes it seems we get firebloom as we are spreading out (5 secs or more on flame dart timer still) followed immediately by flame darts which is just insane amounts of raid damage.

Anyone have any specific thoughts about the timing on collapsing and spreading out for the first shield orb? What is the relation to the firebloom timer here?

 

delling

There seems to be a period of about 10 seconds after the shadow spike where he doesn't cast fire bloom.

Basically, if the orb is 'near', we've never had a fire bloom in the time it takes to get the dragon to the melee. If the orb is far, bloom occasionally comes up while the melee are clumped.

As a result, we don't clump up if it's one of the far orbs, but we clump if it's a near orb

 

taybul

Only other thing I can think of is how quickly are your controllers getting to an orb and how quickly your dragons are getting to the collapse point. After looking at my kill video, there are darts that go out but only when everyone is just getting back to their positions, so I'm talking maybe 3-4 seconds from when we get breaths to when darts go out. I'm pretty sure his timers reset on each transition but timing is still pretty tight.

Also guilds typically don't collapse for breaths on the last transition which is why you may be experiencing these aberrant blooms/darts.

 

Raiste

right. The only active timer I see in BW at the time the first dragon orb spawns is the "Flame Darts" timer. There is usally about 15 seconds left on the flame dart timer when the orb goes active. It seems fairly accurate as far as darts go but we've had a couple of attempts where firebloom is cast at about 6-7 seconds still left on the flame dart timer. So am I correct in assuming that worst case scenario, there is only 10 seconds between the orb going active and a possible firebloom casting?

 

• Intermission

Yes.

 

Volsh

Dragon's blink has no cooldown, if it's the far orb it just means you need to blink twice to get to the raid instead of once. With a bit of practice, it's easily doable every time unless you accidentally blink in the wrong direction when dragon first appears.

 

Lohegrin

Is the Shield Orb Spawn location relative to how Kil'jaeden is facing or do they always come out in the same place?

 

Xulu

Pretty sure they are always in the same place, which is why it is better to spread out over the north side of the room (right as you enter).

 

Lohegrin

Yeah, that's what I though, thanks.
we just got started on KJ and we REALLY want to have him down before the patch :|

 

bludwork

is a lock tank still needed for KJ? Should a warrior/prot paly be able to tank him with the 3.02 changes since casters have an innate 30% threat reduction

 

delling

A feral druid has always been good at main tanking KJ...!

 

• Snowy

You never "needed" a lock tank -- a prot warrior or feral could always do that job as well. I haven't heard stories of a prot pally, I think the threat would be slightly less due to no Holy Shield but I don't see why it isn't doable post 3.02.

Paladin: Pyla
Mage: Pylah

 

• Chicken

A warlock tank never was required, you just need someone capable of putting enough threat to stay on top of the threat list who can also take the soul flays. Warlock tanks only had an advantage in this in that they didn't have to deal with Kil'jaeden's knockbacks. With the 3.02 changes I'd heavily recommend using any of the conventional tanking classes.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

seminarca

Just to echo what everyone's saying, threat is really the major reason for tank selection. While the knockbacks are annoying, it's not gamebreaking to have to deal with them. Ferals can Feral Charge and Warriors with the new Prot talent (I want to say it's called Warbringer?) can also Charge in combat.

In our first night of post patch attempts, we had our Prot Warrior MT him, and he had no threat issues whatsoever. On our second night (which resulted in a kill), we had our Retribution Paladin chuck on his PvP gear, put up Righteous Fury and MT him since we were short a Reflections tank. After about a minute, he had a 100k+ threat lead on #2 on Omen.

 

PsiVen

We've always used a feral, though a warrior should be just as good now with Warbringer. Both of them can sustain high threat and reduce incoming damage while not going crazy from knockbacks.

As a Prot pally I'd say we're less effective than just having a DPS class do the job. Less damage taken surely, but without HS threat or ShoR at 70 the threat just isn't there until phase 5 when you don't need it anymore. Not to mention people get excited whenever I Consecrate on the collapse spot

 

Vaccine

Shame we never got to see this fight before the nerf. My guild folded on pre-nerf m'uru and reformed recently for WotLK. We have half of our sunwell geared players, and the rest are rerollers in crafted/badge gear. We killed M'uru on our 4th try since patch 3.0 (after putting 20 hours or so on him shortly after his gate opened way back). Waltzing down to KJ it took us only 13 tries to kill him Had more trouble on the twins with our blue geared warlock tanking one as all our locks are rerollers with blue leveling gear + the odd sunwell piece.

Nice busy fight though, would have loved to see it pre-nerf. Definately one of my faveourite fights of the expansion along with Vashj.

 

SkotchDS

We actually tried something new for tanking KJ, instead of a warlock tank we used a ret pally with no threat reduction and Righteous Fury, after the ret pally got landed his first blow there was pretty much no reason to even look at omen.

 

kalbear

We're using me (feral druid) as the KJ tank, and the primary benefit is the 18k health + ohshit buttons. I do it in cat gear and am around 1400 DPS on average. Threat is really not an issue.

With locks right now, our DPS becomes very easily threat-capped.

 

Natural

I will second the above poster. Warlocks are most certainly poorer tanks for KJ since the release of 3.0. The TPS for warriors/druids/paladins has gone up significantly and warlocks have not changed.

Today the best tanks for KJ are Retadins with righteous fury, DPS warriors in D-stance, or Ferals in kitty gear. In all of the above the players should stack some extra stamina to make tank healing smooth. Pvp gear works well and also gives resilience which reduces the soul flay damage.

 

EnderW

I am not so sure, the change to Nether protection (30% proc chance for 60% less magic damage) would be better. no?

If you can't do it twice, you can't do it at all -Ender

 

kalbear

Not really. The only challenge on the fight right now is doing enough damage in time. A warlock probably would take less damage overall than any of the tanking classes - but we're not talking about a significant amount of damage, and one healer can deal with it under almost all circumstances as it stands.

At least for us, we were having problems with a warlock because of their low threat. This was causing us to spend too much time in phases as well as causing melee to be knocked back, reducing their damage. When we switched to a higher threat producing tank, we didn't have these issues. If you are having problems with the soul flay damage that KJ does, a lock tank is probably better - but I doubt you will.

The problem I'm seeing with our locks is that locks simply don't do as much damage as they did before, and searing pain was not buffed like tank threat was; it still assumes a salvation effect which no longer exists. The end result is much less threat than before.

 

• Garrodd

Has anybody ever seen Kil'jaeden use the ability Destroy All Drakes? We wiped at 1% last night before dropping him once again when both of our dragons appeared to die immediately after beginning to channel the shield and we hadn't seen that particular ability appear in the combat log before or after that attempt.

Edit: The wowhead link for that spell is Destroy All Drakes - Spell - World of Warcraft