Kil'Jaeden - Page 9

Trolling · 08/24/08, 6:15 PM

Originally Posted by Seife

Usually only melee should collapse, as ranged damagedealer lose a lot of damage while moving from and to the collapse spot. Also, you are likely to get a lot more problematic fire blooms or flame darts because of being clumped up so often. You really want to minimize those incidents.

We do a full raid collapse as soon as Kalecgos says "I've prepared an orb! make haste!" or whatever the hell he says. We barely ever get bloomed, and we're protected from looooooots of dart damage due to a very fast haste breath. Once we started this we killed KJ in a night or two.

Clandestine · 08/24/08, 10:02 PM

Originally Posted by Kyth

Except it's far easier to react pre-shield because they land during collapse, while you're moving, rather than when everyone is stationary. It's definitely taken practice, but we now don't lose even a single person when we get blooms *right* before he starts to channel darkness.

We always haste before shield and have found it far more stable. You have to do it before the second shield anyways, might as well do it all the time and be good at it was our logic.

You don't *have* to do it before the second shield, because you can meet the DPS requirements without it anyways. As well, you don't need the raidwide snare immunity because after the second shield, any Flame Darts which take place will wear off before the raid will need to collapse again, due to Shadow Spikes and the phase transition forced cooldown on Flame Darts.

We experimented a couple times with breathing before the shields, but found that we lost people much more frequently. Also correct me if I'm mistaken, but if you breath pre-shield doesn't that just create a bigger window for late Flame Darts to snare your entire raid? Does Shield of the Blue remove the Flame Darts snare debuff, like it removes Fire Bloom? If not I can see that also creating complications if there is an extremely early Fire Bloom after a Darkness.

Overall, it's interesting that this works for you, but I definitely can't say I'd recommend it for anyone learning the fight. If you're learning the fight you will probably need to accept that sometimes, Kil'Jaeden will use his abilities in such a way that everyone will not survive, and you will then probably wipe because of the DPS requirement. With practice, it becomes easier and easier to survive a wider variety of more harsh ability combinations.

◊ Kyth · 08/25/08, 3:44 AM

Originally Posted by Clandestine

You don't *have* to do it before the second shield, because you can meet the DPS requirements without it anyways. As well, you don't need the raidwide snare immunity because after the second shield, any Flame Darts which take place will wear off before the raid will need to collapse again, due to Shadow Spikes and the phase transition forced cooldown on Flame Darts.

We experimented a couple times with breathing before the shields, but found that we lost people much more frequently. Also correct me if I'm mistaken, but if you breath pre-shield doesn't that just create a bigger window for late Flame Darts to snare your entire raid? Does Shield of the Blue remove the Flame Darts snare debuff, like it removes Fire Bloom? If not I can see that also creating complications if there is an extremely early Fire Bloom after a Darkness.

Overall, it's interesting that this works for you, but I definitely can't say I'd recommend it for anyone learning the fight. If you're learning the fight you will probably need to accept that sometimes, Kil'Jaeden will use his abilities in such a way that everyone will not survive, and you will then probably wipe because of the DPS requirement. With practice, it becomes easier and easier to survive a wider variety of more harsh ability combinations.

We did learn it that way, so I'm not clear on how you say you can't recommend it for anyone learning the fight. This isn't something we came up with after he was already dead.

The reason I said breaths before the second shield was because most guilds that I've seen post arguing for post-shield breaths on the first admit they do it pre-shield for the second. Apparently you just... don't breathe on the ranged? That sounds dicey from both a DPS and a healing perspective.

Overall, pre-shield breaths produced a more stable, consistent fight for us. It's not just hasted DPS. Hasted healing, and revitalized healers, have a lot more health per second that they can throw around, negating some of any potential additional damage (and I actually think there's less overall raid damage when you breath pre-shield.)

And you're completely ignoring the fact that after a shield everyone is stationary. That was the same lesson as on Felmyst: moving people react more quickly to changing situations, it's easier to handle late blooms (pre-shield) than early blooms (post-shield.)

Not to mention, there's a clear set of rules you follow when you get a late bloom as you're collapsing, and it's clear by the timers if you're in risk of one, so you can call it out on vent ("watch, may be blooms"). People with blooms move to the back of the dragon and end up quickly away from the raid.

If there's an early bloom and you're doing post-shield breaths, what do you do? People stay clumped for a *long* time between reaction time plus running out. Not only that but the bloom timer is pretty much always up, you don't know if he's going to do it or not, so it's not nearly as clear when to be alert.

Finally, guilds who have never done breaths pre-shield don't understand the huge value of having your raid already moving out of there right as darkness lands, especially when you're sub-55% with meteors.

The difference in when you have to move is, by the way, about 2-3 seconds max. So the additional "risk window" of clumping pre-shield is very low. The sequence is "Breath, breath, shield", starting at ~6-7 seconds. It's not like everyone is hanging out there for 10-15 seconds

.

nataku · 09/05/08, 7:33 PM

Does Kil'jaeden parry attacks if melee dps attacks in his front 180°?

The claim from our melee is that he does but I haven't read anywhere that this is the case, and I've watched a couple of videos from melee perspective that doesn't seem to show parries when positioned in Kil'jaeden's front 180°.

We've spent four nights on Kil'jaeden and have only made it past the 55% transition twice (with heroisms at 86%). Many of our wipes are poor dragon control and Sinister Reflection control.

Currently, many of our melee start spreading out behind Kil'jaeden to avoid this parrying, but Reflections of the dps warrior or ret paladins or rogues in the back end up being uncontrolled for a bit killing off a few healers or spriests before our prot paladin can control them. If they stay in the front closer and in view of the rest of the raid, I'm hoping for better reflection control.

Hand · 09/05/08, 7:50 PM

Originally Posted by nataku

Does Kil'jaeden parry attacks if melee dps attacks in his front 180°?

The claim from our melee is that he does but I haven't read anywhere that this is the case, and I've watched a couple of videos from melee perspective that doesn't seem to show parries when positioned in Kil'jaeden's front 180°.

We've spent four nights on Kil'jaeden and have only made it past the 55% transition twice (with heroisms at 86%). Many of our wipes are poor dragon control and Sinister Reflection control.

Currently, many of our melee start spreading out behind Kil'jaeden to avoid this parrying, but Reflections of the dps warrior or ret paladins or rogues in the back end up being uncontrolled for a bit killing off a few healers or spriests before our prot paladin can control them. If they stay in the front closer and in view of the rest of the raid, I'm hoping for better reflection control.

He only parries in between casts, its very rare, but it does happen (rarely, since he is casting about 99% of the fight). I would not recommend putting your melee behind the boss.

Buiden · 09/05/08, 7:51 PM

Any NPC cannot parry/dodge while casting a spell. Since KJ spends 99% of his time casting spells his parry rate is incredibly low.

Edit: Fuck beaten...

• Intermission · 09/06/08, 9:45 AM

Originally Posted by Hand

He only parries in between casts, its very rare, but it does happen (rarely, since he is casting about 99% of the fight). I would not recommend putting your melee behind the boss.

While I agree that the parries are negligible, putting melee behind the boss can have its benefits for positioning reasons.

Our melee spread around the boss, with the hunter pets (as 1 spot) and the tank towards the front. The melee can group up for breaths/collapse while attacking with no dps loss either. This gives us room to put the mages/warlocks in the "front" side of KJ melee range (or 1 row back, and run in during transitions), for easy Reflection pick-ups.

Shield orbs are all killed before they make it to the back unattended part of the room obviously, or they would hurt the melee as they swing around.

Tel · 09/06/08, 7:40 PM

We also have our melee just behind the boss. As they're getting early haste breath anyway, it doesn't cause a issue with movement.

dazed420 · 09/08/08, 10:57 AM

Current issue is successul control of the reflection adds while being able to burn KJ to the 75% mark by the end of shadow spikes.

We normally have one full melee group with maybe one to two floater malee, 7-8 healers, rest range.

We are running out of ideas in getting the raid a successful burn of 85-75% during shadow spikes while also killing the reflections.

I assume I am missing something with regards to either how many people should be dpsing KJ and how many people should be killing the reflections.

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

◊ Kyth · 09/08/08, 11:15 AM

All our ranged except our survival hunter (and warlock soulflay tank) dps images, single-target. They die plenty fast enough.

I would probably worry less about specific dps targets and pay more attention to how many people you're losing as you do 85-55%. People not killing orbs fast enough is a very common problem, so check wws to make sure they're actually dying. High orb damage leads to a lot of "people were just sort of dying" deaths that can look like healer error otherwise.

Also make sure your raid is getting the breaths, whether you do it before the shield (our preference) or after.

dazed420 · 09/08/08, 12:39 PM

Originally Posted by Kyth

All our ranged except our survival hunter (and warlock soulflay tank) dps images, single-target. They die plenty fast enough.

I would probably worry less about specific dps targets and pay more attention to how many people you're losing as you do 85-55%. People not killing orbs fast enough is a very common problem, so check wws to make sure they're actually dying. High orb damage leads to a lot of "people were just sort of dying" deaths that can look like healer error otherwise.

Also make sure your raid is getting the breaths, whether you do it before the shield (our preference) or after.

Thank you for your response.

Killing orbs is an issue, as it is clear some of our range does the switch while some of our range does not.

As for keeping people alive, we generally do not lose people until after the first shield usage. We do the breaths before the shield, run out and this is usually where people die. THe reason for their death is clear, they are slow both in their movment out of the shield and in their head for it not sinking in yet.

That being said, I am curious if 75% KJ health at the end of the shadow spikes is a realiztic number with a single hero or is it something else we should try?

Hand · 09/08/08, 2:48 PM

Originally Posted by dazed420

Thank you for your response.

Killing orbs is an issue, as it is clear some of our range does the switch while some of our range does not.

As for keeping people alive, we generally do not lose people until after the first shield usage. We do the breaths before the shield, run out and this is usually where people die. THe reason for their death is clear, they are slow both in their movment out of the shield and in their head for it not sinking in yet.

That being said, I am curious if 75% KJ health at the end of the shadow spikes is a realiztic number with a single hero or is it something else we should try?

75% seems really low. I just watched a fraps I have of our KJ and we had him at 79% at the end of the shadow spikes (we don't use any heroisms) and we were still able to get him to 58% when the second shield went up. We do heroism the entire raid right at 55%, and even after that shadow spike phase we only had him at 46% at the end of them. After the second shield we had him at 27%. My point being, 58% and 27% at the second shield in each respective phase is just going to show that even with our dps (which is very far ahead) we weren't able to burn 10% off during shadow spikes, so I wouldn't expect to do that.

dazed420 · 09/08/08, 4:30 PM

Originally Posted by Hand

75% seems really low. I just watched a fraps I have of our KJ and we had him at 79% at the end of the shadow spikes (we don't use any heroisms) and we were still able to get him to 58% when the second shield went up. We do heroism the entire raid right at 55%, and even after that shadow spike phase we only had him at 46% at the end of them. After the second shield we had him at 27%. My point being, 58% and 27% at the second shield in each respective phase is just going to show that even with our dps (which is very far ahead) we weren't able to burn 10% off during shadow spikes, so I wouldn't expect to do that.

Thank you for this information. I honestly was thinking we were screwed becasue the best we could do was 78-79 if we run with the right melee people no hero.

• Intermission · 09/08/08, 8:54 PM

I know this is a pretty general statement, but I think it still needs to be said:

Until you are dying to the 3rd Darkness most the time, KJ dps is pretty irrelevant. Every single ranged dpser in the room should be killing orbs.

Do you have most of a raid alive by the 3rd Darkness (then dying to it because there is no more bubble)? If you are, then you're close and you will need to have a check to see how your DPS is going when everyone is alive for the whole time. I'm not sure why you're aiming to get a certain % after shadow spikes. That's just the stand and nuke (+ dodge) phase. The real test of dps is when you are also taking down Shield Orbs, in addition to collapsing/spreading for bubble/breaths.

Gofa · 09/08/08, 10:24 PM

Yes dps shouldn't be a too big issue. As long as everyone survives, you should make it to 55% (25%) before the 3rd ulitmate. Every range should be killing orbs as fast as possible. They deal a lot of damage - keep telling them to take them down fast.

• Intermission · 09/08/08, 10:33 PM

PS: shaming lazy/bad ranged DPS by reporting a Damage-Done-To-Shield-Orb damage meter list is a quick way to stop "well, chances are my cast wont complete anyway, I'll just stick to KJ for now" mentality.

◊ Kyth · 09/09/08, 6:17 AM

Originally Posted by dazed420

Killing orbs is an issue, as it is clear some of our range does the switch while some of our range does not.

Make it clear that ranged who kill orbs will be invited back to KJ, and those who don't won't

. Ranged kills orbs and images. The fact that sometimes they also hit KJ is a nice added bonus. Melee kill KJ.

Your locks should dot orbs as well, so should your spriests. It helps with one that's escaping around the back (if you station your mages on the far edges, they also can blink around either to take out one that just escaped, or get damage on one that is coming back around before it starts pelting the entire raid again.)

As for keeping people alive, we generally do not lose people until after the first shield usage. We do the breaths before the shield, run out and this is usually where people die. THe reason for their death is clear, they are slow both in their movment out of the shield and in their head for it not sinking in yet.

To solve this we started telling people to be at the edge of the shield before the bomb even went off. Be right at the edge and the minute you see its animation, take off and head towards your spot.

Too many people are otherwise waiting around for when they see the shield graphic disappear, and then moving back.

As others said, 75% seems to be very optimistic, especially for a guild learning KJ. I wouldn't worry about your KJ dps unless you're regularly getting to the 3rd darkness with everyone alive and not making the dps timers.

dazed420 · 09/09/08, 10:51 AM

Originally Posted by Kyth

Make it clear that ranged who kill orbs will be invited back to KJ, and those who don't won't

. Ranged kills orbs and images. The fact that sometimes they also hit KJ is a nice added bonus. Melee kill KJ.

Your locks should dot orbs as well, so should your spriests. It helps with one that's escaping around the back (if you station your mages on the far edges, they also can blink around either to take out one that just escaped, or get damage on one that is coming back around before it starts pelting the entire raid again.)

To solve this we started telling people to be at the edge of the shield before the bomb even went off. Be right at the edge and the minute you see its animation, take off and head towards your spot.

Too many people are otherwise waiting around for when they see the shield graphic disappear, and then moving back.

As others said, 75% seems to be very optimistic, especially for a guild learning KJ. I wouldn't worry about your KJ dps unless you're regularly getting to the 3rd darkness with everyone alive and not making the dps timers.

Thank you all for your responses. I saw some improvement last night and yes we are now getting to the third darkness with maybe 1-2 people dead and not being close enough to the 55%. There were some attempts where we could of made the mark and the main difference is a survivial hunter, or a lack of for the other attempts.

Range is still not listening at times, I randomly make them a focus target and watch what they are doing. We've also had it where a single reflection is up, with the end result, me a rogue, goes and kills them.

In the end though our reflection killing improved, we consistently saw 60% and the third darkness it is just lack of orb killing now.

• Intermission · 09/09/08, 11:09 AM

If you're struggling with DPS, make sure you aren't bringing too many tanks. You only really *need* one tank, the Reflections tank. A lot of guilds use warlocks to tank KJ, a lot of guilds use a dual wielding arms warrior with Blood Frenzy, and MS+Tactical Mastery, and some use more traditional feral tanks in PvP/DPS gear, etc. You can really optimise your raid based on your guild with all the options available.

And dont worry about the P1 adds. The Reflections tank can tank one, and dps warrior/enhancement shaman/etc can tank the others.

Copernicus · 09/09/08, 11:25 AM

Is there a mod or an add-on for Grid that can show me who has the haste buff?

nataku · 09/09/08, 12:29 PM

Originally Posted by Copernicus

Is there a mod or an add-on for Grid that can show me who has the haste buff?

Coper, you can add any buff or debuff to be viewed in Grid. Just ask in raid chat!

PsiVen · 09/09/08, 1:09 PM

As long as people aren't standing around trying to shoot things that are out of range, Reflection killing speed hasn't been that important for us. Quite often we would get a warlock or mage call out on the edges, single target would take down 2 before they switched off for orbs and the last ones would die after the first Darkness. Not great in terms of healing, but not the end of the world either as there's little danger of dying to 2 of them. The only reflections you really need to have dead by the Shield are the Warriors, so as long as there's a way to position them within Seed range of KJ there shouldn't be much DPS sacrificed.

sp00n · 09/12/08, 11:35 AM

Originally Posted by Kyth

As others said, 75% seems to be very optimistic, especially for a guild learning KJ. I wouldn't worry about your KJ dps unless you're regularly getting to the 3rd darkness with everyone alive and not making the dps timers.

Interesting, I just stumbled across the link in your signature and the corresponding KJ tactic there, where it states "As a timeline, you should aim to have KJ at 75% or lower at the end of the Shadow Spike."

Should be fixed then.

Buiden · 09/12/08, 4:00 PM

Originally Posted by Copernicus

Is there a mod or an add-on for Grid that can show me who has the haste buff?

It should be fairly obvious just looking at the raid who missed it as they aren't bright blue! At least for us it is usually the same people that frequently miss it so I just get used to hitting them with individual ones between bombs.

◊ Kyth · 09/12/08, 5:36 PM

Originally Posted by sp00n

Interesting, I just stumbled across the link in your signature and the corresponding KJ tactic there, where it states "As a timeline, you should aim to have KJ at 75% or lower at the end of the Shadow Spike."

Should be fixed then.

Hmm. I didn't write every section of that

. Just most of it. Thanks for pointing that out though.

I'll go look at some of our vids (our first-kill vid is probably the most appropriate) and update if needed.

At a minimum I will add that until you're making it to the 3rd darkness with everyone up, KJ dps isn't your issue: I've watched a couple of guilds other than us learn KJ now (through talking each night with their members) and the common theme is orbs aren't dying, but yet them focusing on what KJ's health percentage is.

(edit) Yeah, our first kill had him at 77% at the end of the shadow spikes. 75% isn't a bad guideline, but it's probably too aggressive for people thinking "omg if we don't have him this low we won't make it."

I'll edit it. Thank you

.