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.

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.

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.

No.

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

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.

@Dra

Which should be better anyway as Praetorian discriped already above:

@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.

Kil'jaeden is a huge source of RNG and frustrating wipes, I'll give you that. But hard to repeat, not so very much if everyone plays properly.
I've noticed that we seem to get queued casts (Darkness -> Flame Dart -> Firebloom) whenever our DPS is low throughout the whole fight, that includes phase 1-2 (Adds / KJ 'phase 1'). I know it doesn't make sense, but everytime we push it to the maximum throughout the whole fight, we seem to be fine. If we have to hold because someone disconnected in phase 1, then we get these obscene queued casts and other instawipe stuff. I remember a few weeks ago he wiped us by simply casting Darkness, with a meteor spawning on top of us in the shield, followed by a Flame Dart (we buff haste after the shield at that point, so no one had the haste buff except a few) and then a Fire Bloom. That's insane. You would require more than 100% perfect play and focus from your guild to survive, which is fine to an extent, but not like this. Especially since straight after he always seems to spawn his Shadow Orbs, screwing you over.

Anyway, I disgress - the RNG in the fight is random, but like I said, I have noticed that it only seems to occur when we are slow on DPS, has anyone seen it happen even if you're really fast? I know that if you're fast you obviously have less chances of RNG occuring, but it was just really noticable for me. Sometimes we get him to 85% in less than a minute, followed by 56% after the second shield, and so on. Then it never has happened. It just seems odd. Perhaps the timr for Flame Dart already runs in phase 2 and depending on your timing of when you get him to phase 3 it will or will not screw you over? It all sounds so farfetched, but after realising that his initial Soulflay targetting was on the person who took the most shadow damage in phase 1, I would not be surprised.

As for tips go, this is a serious damage race really. On a fight like this you really need to have your groups synergising a lot. You should obviously have the maximum amount of damage increasing debuffs too, you hardly have a choice. Post 55% is the hard part, in my opinion. The race from 55% -> 25% is when most of our fuckups occur. The damage you start seeing on your raid is insane. On one of our attempts last week we had about 2k dps on all of our melee for about 10 seconds. Amazing amount of healing required to keep that up, it was nearly impossible. We had Flame Dart explosion (we stack 2 per spot for melee), Firebloom on every melee member and Shadow Orbs nuking the hell out of us. That will happen and you need to prepare your raid for it. It's imperative at that point everyone realises they need to use their class abilities to the max to survive. Sometimes it's not survivable, sometimes it is. That's just how it's gonna be, don't get demotivated over it, that's just how the fight works.

Anyway, to continue. It's a DPS race therefor you should have the optimal groups. That includes a hunter group with a feral and a shaman. That includes a melee group with at least an Enhance Shaman, preferably a Ret Paladin as well. I was very strict on consumables during our learning process. Whilst I was leading I made sure every single melee and every hunter used Demonslaying Elixirs. It's unreal how good that Elixir is. I'd say for a first kill they're imperative. If you chug one down at 85% you only need to use the second one at just about 25%. So it won't get overly expensive. Although, when both us and Inner Sanctum were practicing Kil'jaeden, Ghost Mushrooms were going for just about 250g a stack. So I suggest farming them in Dire Maul or so.
Also a Blood Frenzy Warrior and Expose Weakness Hunter will help greatly. As will 3 Warlocks. For the melee, if you're not standing at his face like I am, then he will parry very little attacks. He's almost constantly casting, so he has very little time to do so. I find switching out my [Shard of Contempt] for [Dragonspine Trophy] wields best results. That's personal flavour, though I guess.

The best piece of advice I can give is probably to not be too demotivated by the RNG wipes and be strict about people dying due to not getting in the Shield in time or dying to Armageddon. Those are not acceptable. Be on the ball with it and make sure the people that die from it realise that you're serious about it. The only time I've died from an Armaggedon was when the tank got knocked back and he turned to me and did his knockback on me as well, tossing me straight into one. That can happen so be ready for it . Furthermore, we decided on a Feral Druid tank, we didn't really think much about using something else. They're in mostly DPS gear when they tank it, barely reach 20k HP I believe. They output 1000 dps whilst tanking and do just about 2k TPS, whilst buffing our hunter group. Obviously though, Warlock tanks work. I just don't really see the advantage on this one. We have a Prot Paladin picking up the Reflections, it was just the logical choice for us, they're the kings of AE tanking after all. Again, personal flavour.

Oh and by the way, getting sub 25% with 25 people alive is almost certainly a kill. It was kind of disappointing, but it gets significantly easier at 25%.

I'd also recommend putting healing druids (and your better/more aware players in general) at the further locations from your collapse/shield location. You don't want people who notice things a bit late (oops there's a darkness that's just cast and I'm still 40 yards away!).

Druids can also shapeshift to clear the darts debuff and with an innervate/pots I don't usually need the mana breath, so I stay clear and concentrate on healing while the other healers are on the move. And if I'm a bit late noticing darkness about to cast I have a sprint available to me too. I do need to remember which collapses I need to do, and which I can ignore, but that's pretty easy with something like Bigwigs timers.

I have no experience with the fight, and the info I know is from wowwiki.com (yes, I know), and it states that at 25% Kil'jaeden uses his abilities without a cooldown, I can't see how it would get any easier, enlighten me please

If only it were true. We had so many sub 10% wipes because of shields or people dieing to meteors. I know that's not the encounters fault, but makes for one hell of a disappointing mood.

One thing I did want to know was, did any guilds use Amplify or Dampen Magic? It was something we didn't discuss up until Sunday when we finally decided to give it ago. From what we saw, the only spell that was affected from Amplify was the Legion Lighting (the mana burn part wasn't, just the damage) so we decided to leave that on.

I'd noticed in a lot of videos that they had neither, any specific reason for that?