One reason 1112 is sometimes more popular than 112 if you are not shooting for the 6 minute achievement but just trying to get your raid group to function is the stack is less vulnerable to dropping while shielding, or to mistakes where you drift out of range or whatever and need to recover. You have more of a buffer to get up a 112 after shielding even if you got into some energy trouble.
All shielding strats are vulnerable to dropping stacks if you get focused twice and if focused 3 times in a row you'll almost certainly drop stack if you try to bring up a shield each time.
One strategy that allows you to drop the number of healers is a 1123 setup. It adds 10 energy to the rotation but also guarantees 2500 hps on every dragon. Basically you do the standard 112 and then cast 3 on yourself. You can prestack the HoT during the untargetable phase and then just refresh it every 10 seconds. In 25man this vastly reduces the chance that the new target for Surge of Power is at low health and reduces the danger of all the splash damage. It requires a little more effort but anyone pushing this content and looking to reduce the number of healers should be more than capable.
I´ll just repeat what I posted quite a bit ago:
11123 works fine - the energy is enough to pull that off. 1123 works aswell.
I also solo drake healed the 10man today(aside from that 1 dead drake with tripple focus).
I've been thinking some more about the rotation, and something just occurred to me which in hindsight should have been obvious. Previously, in a no-shield strategy, I had only considered the following rotations: [1, 2] and [1, 1, 2]. I came to the conclusion that [1, 2] was unsustainable in a real environment (it requires 6 seconds of energy regen but only provides exactly 6 seconds of time to refresh the stack). My conclusion was to start with two iterations of [1, 2] (with a pause of a few seconds in between) followed by [1, 1, 2] until the end of the fight.
What I realize now (and again, I feel silly for missing this) is that you can go back into [1, 2] (I'll call this sequence X from here on) after using a few [1, 1, 2] (I'll call this Y from here on) iterations to build up an energy buffer.
So what is the ideal ratio of X to Y in a real situation? 1 X for every 1 Y is sustainable -- it requires 13 seconds worth of energy regen and provides 16 seconds of finisher duration, giving you 1.5 seconds of leeway with each finisher. 2x:1Y might work, though it's getting more dangerous -- it requires 19 seconds of energy regen for 22 seconds of finisher duration, giving you only 1 seconds of leeway with each finisher.
Without going through through every ratio of X to Y, it's obvious that they'll all be theoretically sustainable, since X will always add as much finisher duration as it will add energy required (6 seconds), but the higher your ratio of X:Y, the tighter you'll have to be with hitting your finishers at the right moment to prevent dropping the stack. I honestly think anything beyond a 1:1 ratio is already playing it too dangerous, considering the need to move periodically, potentially resulting in slightly different missile time, causing the reapplication of your finisher to lose sync with when you actually press the button. Really, I've gotten the 6 minute kill (non-heroic) using a plain [1, 1, 2] rotation, so this is all more elaborate than is strictly necessary. But it might be useful for people who feel they can pull off the more risky and (slightly) higher dps rotations who need to pull more than their weight (because of others who have trouble maintaining a basic roation).
Another note is that this really isn't that much faster at building stacks than a plain [1, 1, 2] rotation. X:Y will result in 14 stacks after 91 seconds, whereas plain Y will result in 13 stacks after the same amount of time.
TL;DR version: For slightly higher dps in a no-shield P3 strat, instead of [1, 1, 2], do [1, 2, (wait until 65 energy), 1, 1, 2 (wait until 90 energy)]
I've been thinking some more about the rotation, and something just occurred to me which in hindsight should have been obvious. Previously, in a no-shield strategy, I had only considered the following rotations: [1, 2] and [1, 1, 2]. I came to the conclusion that [1, 2] was unsustainable in a real environment (it requires 6 seconds of energy regen but only provides exactly 6 seconds of time to refresh the stack). My conclusion was to start with two iterations of [1, 2] (with a pause of a few seconds in between) followed by [1, 1, 2] until the end of the fight.
What I realize now (and again, I feel silly for missing this) is that you can go back into [1, 2] (I'll call this sequence X from here on) after using a few [1, 1, 2] (I'll call this Y from here on) iterations to build up an energy buffer.
So what is the ideal ratio of X to Y in a real situation? 1 X for every 1 Y is sustainable -- it requires 13 seconds worth of energy regen and provides 16 seconds of finisher duration, giving you 1.5 seconds of leeway with each finisher. 2x:1Y might work, though it's getting more dangerous -- it requires 19 seconds of energy regen for 22 seconds of finisher duration, giving you only 1 seconds of leeway with each finisher.
Without going through through every ratio of X to Y, it's obvious that they'll all be theoretically sustainable, since X will always add as much finisher duration as it will add energy required (6 seconds), but the higher your ratio of X:Y, the tighter you'll have to be with hitting your finishers at the right moment to prevent dropping the stack. I honestly think anything beyond a 1:1 ratio is already playing it too dangerous, considering the need to move periodically, potentially resulting in slightly different missile time, causing the reapplication of your finisher to lose sync with when you actually press the button. Really, I've gotten the 6 minute kill (non-heroic) using a plain [1, 1, 2] rotation, so this is all more elaborate than is strictly necessary. But it might be useful for people who feel they can pull off the more risky and (slightly) higher dps rotations who need to pull more than their weight (because of others who have trouble maintaining a basic roation).
Another note is that this really isn't that much faster at building stacks than a plain [1, 1, 2] rotation. X:Y will result in 14 stacks after 91 seconds, whereas plain Y will result in 13 stacks after the same amount of time.
TL;DR version: For slightly higher dps in a no-shield P3 strat, instead of [1, 1, 2], do [1, 2, (wait until 70 energy), 1, 1, 2 (wait until 90 energy)]
Yes, it's doable. I tested it last weekend doing the daily, and it's sustainable, and fast enough to kill them before they kill you provided they don't surge. (I wouldn't try it without a pocket healer unless you're a druid, for obvious reasons. Fortunately, I am.) I discussed it with some friends in the guild and concluded that it's probably not something you want to try to get your whole guild doing.
The math is pretty straightforward, obviously. If you do a simple "xX:yY" cycle, then you get 3*y seconds of slack distributed over (x+y) cycles (assuming you're clever enough not to let your energy cap), and with 'best' play, you gain x seconds over 7*(x+y) seconds. Once you gain 6 seconds, you're an entire stack ahead (but note you are gaining DPS every tick as soon as you're 3 seconds ahead, so don't be fooled into thinking you have to get an entire stack ahead to make a difference.)
The major drawback over a 1 1 2 non-self-healing strategy is that for 1 1 2, the optimal behavior is to spam, so once you're accustomed to firing on the move, 7*y seconds (plus latency) is a fairly hard limit--while if you're doing one too many things while trying to do an X:Y rotation, it's actually possible to use up to 16 seconds in the limiting case, and since you're pooling instead of spamming, it's much more likely that you won't come too close to that 13 second target.
I don't think 2X:1Y is sustainable by hand. It might be doable with a /castsequence, provided your latency is good. You should see roughly a 10% increase in output using that cycle, best case. 2X:1Y:1X:1Y is probably the limiting case of manual sustainability for a fixed rotation, giving 1.2 seconds of slack per finisher, and a gain of 3 seconds over 35, for a bit over 8%. Best behavior is going to be some sort of a priority system, where if your energy+(remaining time*10) passes a certain threshold, you do a 2 spike engulf in order to add 3 seconds. In the theoretical best case, you gain 14.3% DPS, which is pretty good, but of course that's a pure 1 2 cycle, which is only sustainable in the zero latency and perfect play situation.
The major drawback over a 1 1 2 non-self-healing strategy is that for 1 1 2, the optimal behavior is to spam, so once you're accustomed to firing on the move, 7*y seconds (plus latency) is a fairly hard limit--while if you're doing one too many things while trying to do an X:Y rotation, it's actually possible to use up to 16 seconds in the limiting case, and since you're pooling instead of spamming, it's much more likely that you won't come too close to that 13 second target.
As long as you're not letting energy cap, you don't have to worry about losing time. If you're slightly slow on one iteration, you make up for it by being slightly fast on the next. The best way to do this (and probably easiest to maintain, accounting for potential loss of focus) is to have certain energy thresholds as your fire points rather than trying to time it based on your previous fire. If you're going for [1, 2, (wait until 65 energy), 1, 1, 2 (wait until 90 energy)], as I recommended in my previous post (you quoted me saying 70 for the first pause, but I ninja-edited because I realized that 65 is the better option), and you accidentally fire off the first Engulf at 70 energy instead of 65, it doesn't change a thing. You could go as far as waiting until 79 seconds (80 is the border for when the stack will drop anywhere past the first iteration), and as long as you hit the next Engulf at 90, and the one after that at 65 again, your rotation is maintained without loss. Taking this into account, it might be better to use [1, 2, (wait until 55 energy), 1, 1, 2 (wait until 80 energy)]. This is the same timing cycle, but has the duel benefit of starting your stacks sooner on the first iteration, and giving you more leeway to not energy cap at the end of each iteration.
True, and I was being even more conservative in my head than your post, because when I tested it I used 75 and 100 as the thresholds. The main point is that since you will ultimately lose your stack if you don't pool before the [1 2] engulf, there's a risk of screwing it up that doesn't exist in a straight [1 1 2] rotation. But you're right, of course, you only need 5 GCDs over those 13 seconds, so provided you don't cap energy or drop your stack, you can recover your position, and it's only in the long term that your limit is a one in fourteen second gain.
Keep in mind that from the point where you do your [1 2] engulf, you need to be able to engulf again with 10 less energy in order to do a [1 1 2], so the hard minimum is 60. If you engulf at 55, you are at 5 energy, and after 1 1 and nearly 6 seconds, you're at 45. That's...going to adversely affect your DPS. If you ever do a [1 2] engulf at or below 60 energy, you're doomed to just spam [1 2] until your latency kills your stack. I would never go lower than 65, personally. That's only allowing a half second of {lag+idiocy} before you enter the death spiral.
Extracting the relevant line there and restating:
If (energy/10 + combo points + time remaining on engulf ) < 7, you're mathematically cooked, because you can't ever again do more than a single CP engulf. In the real world, add latency to the left side as well.
The margin to recover is not as big as you seem to think.
I`m thinking about starting the 10 man Malygos 6 minute achievement coming up this week to finish off Glory of the Raider before 3.1. Anyways, I`ve done it on 25-man with relative ease, and I plan on bringing 1 tank, 1 melee (dk), 2 healers and 6 ranged dps.
My question is: would it be possible to heal it with 1 druid or priest and 1 holy pally, the reason I`m unsure is because of the vortices, i know pallies arent optimal, but im thinking if there is only 1 maybe 2 vortices i can just sacred shield everyone and hope the druid or priest heals their butts off.
You can 2 heal it, just stack ranged dps, with 1 or 2 mele besides the MT. Have the range get the scions down as the mele works on the nexus lords. Stay in power sparks and make sure you pull any other sparks that may have emerged during p1, but weren't accessible.
We found that having a vortex at 51% and then the take off was the best result. Our fastest kill had about 45-60 seconds left with a total of 4 power sparks down at different points. Using this strat Get your healers on disks first so they don't have to heal themselves. Ideally 1 or 2 scions should be dead with in the first 20 seconds of p2. We did our best kill with 2 healers. And could probably push another 10-15 seconds out of it easily with one less healer, but stacking this much ranged is a great benefit to not push over the vortex, Have your mages save their iceblock for the second vortex so they can take full advantage of the fact that there is a lot of air time, just watch threat, I had the unfortunate exerpience of being at about 145% over tank threat, maly landed at 48% hp, turned 1 shot me, and flew away. I've had other times where this isn't the case, but having a hand of salv or even a bop up for that moment.
The character linked in your profile appears to be below level 10. This may account for your poor Patchwerk DPS.
I`m thinking about starting the 10 man Malygos 6 minute achievement coming up this week to finish off Glory of the Raider before 3.1. Anyways, I`ve done it on 25-man with relative ease, and I plan on bringing 1 tank, 1 melee (dk), 2 healers and 6 ranged dps.
My question is: would it be possible to heal it with 1 druid or priest and 1 holy pally, the reason I`m unsure is because of the vortices, i know pallies arent optimal, but im thinking if there is only 1 maybe 2 vortices i can just sacred shield everyone and hope the druid or priest heals their butts off.
We did it with a Druid and Paladin healer. I beacon the MT and solo heal p1 (save vortex time) and the Druid dps's. The 4%~ or so can really help out.
One thing I'm curious about, since the amount of DPS any drake can do is the same, assuming a DPSer doesn't let his stack fall off, is whether anyone has figured out a rough guide as to how long Phase 3 will take, depending on how much health Malygos has when he starts.
I'd look for something like:
If he has 30% left it'll take 2 minutes to kill him, including RP speech.
If he has 35% left it'll take 2 minutes, 30 seconds, including RP speech.
It'd be nice to have a rule of thumb to have ahead of time so the raid leader can know whether or not to call a wipe so you don't accidentally kill Malygos and waste a week.
One thing I'm curious about, since the amount of DPS any drake can do is the same, assuming a DPSer doesn't let his stack fall off, is whether anyone has figured out a rough guide as to how long Phase 3 will take, depending on how much health Malygos has when he starts.
I was actually just trying to figure this out today, so I attempted to write a simple simulation. This is what I got:
Health %
Time (s)
20
58
25
67
30
73
35
79
40
85
45
91
50
97
No guarantees as to the accuracy, but it more-or-less fits what I expected it to. (That is, the relative amount of time increasing like the squareroot of the relative amount of health remaining.) The reason the time tends to increase in multiples of 6 is because I assumed every DPSer was doing the exact same thing at the exact same time, so damage essentially came in 3 second bursts (DoT ticks). Because of that inaccuracy, in reality these numbers would probably be slightly different.
The time represents only DPS time, so it would exclude everything up until he becomes targetable. This assumes 20 DPSers, 4 Healers, and 1 suicide CoE warlock with Malediction, I don't really know if this is an appropriate setup or not in terms of number of healers. It also assumes perfect execution by the DPSers, no shielding, and a 12121212112112.... rotation. I found that beginning with 12121212 was the best use of the initial pool of energy that you start with, though it is risky if you aren't paying attention, and is only a gain of a few seconds. I also found that attempting to re-pool your energy to begin another 12121212 rotation was not worth falling behind in DoT stacks while re-pooling.
Edit: Also assumes zero travel time, but this shouldn't matter as long as you are always the same distance from the boss, it would just add a second or two to the overall time.
One of our hunters discovered a useful trick that I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned elsewhere. If you Track Elementals, you can see the sparks on the minimap. This makes it very easy for them to ping the minimap with the location of the incoming spark during vortex.
I can confirm after our successful 6 minute yesterday that it's almost certainly not worth trying to sneak in any 12 rotations once you settle into your 112 112 spam unless you're pretty damn amazing. Because 112 is spammable you can pretty much guarantee little or no wasted time/energy, which is very much not true when you're fitting 12s in. The time gained at the start by racing to zero instead of pooling is too hard to catch back up if you're in a raid good enough to spend less than 2 minutes in phase 3, based on what I saw. I wholeheartedly recommend starting with one, or a few, 12 repetitions depending on how good you are at them and then just spamming the hell out of 112. Even if you do fall behind a few seconds by just heading right into 112 112, if you assume 7 seconds of deficit (AKA 1 stack), you've lost 500 dps. Losing your stack attempting something more complicated will cost you a lot more than 500 dps.
I think 4 healers and a suicide lock is pretty much the right setup.
One thing I'm curious about, since the amount of DPS any drake can do is the same, assuming a DPSer doesn't let his stack fall off, is whether anyone has figured out a rough guide as to how long Phase 3 will take, depending on how much health Malygos has when he starts.
I'd look for something like:
If he has 30% left it'll take 2 minutes to kill him, including RP speech.
If he has 35% left it'll take 2 minutes, 30 seconds, including RP speech.
It'd be nice to have a rule of thumb to have ahead of time so the raid leader can know whether or not to call a wipe so you don't accidentally kill Malygos and waste a week.
Although It's not the minimum amount of time required, having 2 minutes going into P3 with Malygos at ~35% is enough time to complete the achievement with 8 (20) dps. (For 10 man I personally suggest going 9 dps/1 healer because it gives you room for someone to die early and still meet the timer). At 40 seconds you want Malygos to be 20% or lower with good stacks running.
It's called Bloodlust, not Heroism. What kind of pansy name is Heroism, anyway?
<Bad> Dragonmaw US www.damnwesuck.com
12/13 [25] Heroic - Recruiting exceptional players.
Is there a well known "timer lag" on Malygos for DBM's enrage timer?
Last night our melee group went for Malygos 10 man 6 minute - according to DBM's enrage timer we had ~6 seconds left when he died (4:06 to enrage) but when he actually died, DBM told us it took us 6:04, and we didn't get the achievement.
Obviously we can schedule next time to consider anything after 4:10 to enrage as a wipe, but I'd hate for that to have a bit of different lag and give us a 6:01 kill, especially with so few weeks left to Ulduar.
Especially frustrating since we had someone die on p3 and chose not to wipe it because it looked like we were ahead of the timer.
I just want to know if there's a standard margin of error we have to leave to be sure.
You can track the timer on the achievement itself. Just open up your achievements and shift-click on You Don't have an Eternity. It should show the achievement name and a timer in the same place where quest items are tracked.
Is there a well known "timer lag" on Malygos for DBM's enrage timer?
Last night our melee group went for Malygos 10 man 6 minute - according to DBM's enrage timer we had ~6 seconds left when he died (4:06 to enrage) but when he actually died, DBM told us it took us 6:04, and we didn't get the achievement.
Obviously we can schedule next time to consider anything after 4:10 to enrage as a wipe, but I'd hate for that to have a bit of different lag and give us a 6:01 kill, especially with so few weeks left to Ulduar.
Especially frustrating since we had someone die on p3 and chose not to wipe it because it looked like we were ahead of the timer.
I just want to know if there's a standard margin of error we have to leave to be sure.
If you track the achievement from your achievement panel, it will show a timer on screen as soon as you start the fight, which will almost certainly be more accurate than what DBM is showing.
Displaying the Blizzard timer is also useful because it shows how much extra time you need to wait if you call a wipe in P1 or P2 and come back early -- you need to wait until the timer finishes before starting the next attempt, otherwise it will still be running the same timer from the previous attempt (which will obviously not be nearly enough time).
Is there a well known "timer lag" on Malygos for DBM's enrage timer?
Last night our melee group went for Malygos 10 man 6 minute - according to DBM's enrage timer we had ~6 seconds left when he died (4:06 to enrage) but when he actually died, DBM told us it took us 6:04, and we didn't get the achievement.
Obviously we can schedule next time to consider anything after 4:10 to enrage as a wipe, but I'd hate for that to have a bit of different lag and give us a 6:01 kill, especially with so few weeks left to Ulduar.
Especially frustrating since we had someone die on p3 and chose not to wipe it because it looked like we were ahead of the timer.
I just want to know if there's a standard margin of error we have to leave to be sure.
If you pay attention you can see that DBM's enrage timer starts at 10 minutes 12 seconds or so (and is accurate as far I've seen). Presumably we get a little extra time for his P2->P3 transition where we can't target him or something like that.
Originally Posted by Crowl
If you have to control a robot dinosaur that fires lazers and there's a time when you shouldn't be shooting those lazers then the encounter is clearly flawed beyond hope of fixing.
You can track the timer on the achievement itself. Just open up your achievements and shift-click on You Don't have an Eternity. It should show the achievement name and a timer in the same place where quest items are tracked.
Well, the 13% buff seems pretty obvious. If you have 8 DPS drakes up, then 0.13 * 8 = 1.04, so that's the break even point where the loss of the warlock's Engulf in Flames stack balances against the increase in damage. Any extra DPS drakes you have just gives you more damage above any beyond what the warlock would have done.
Given that break even of 8, I would not suggest a "suicide warlock" for 10 man Malygos, but it seems like a no brainer for 25 man.
I apologize beforehand if what im about to ask has already been pointed out in this thread, have spent time reading but a few things still confuses me.
Some people are mentioning getting Maly down to numbers like 11% in phase 1, to me this seems strange as he lifts into the air at 50%, i think the most we've been able to squeeze out of him inbetween phase 1 and 2 is maybe 5% extra. Are you stacking range dps for the sole purpose of doing alot of dmg in that window?
Also in phase 3, is it possible to outheal the static fields and the targetted beam by Maly if you stack healers, or do you have to move out of the field? Having a hard time getting our raidgroup to move together...
Some people are mentioning getting Maly down to numbers like 11% in phase 1, to me this seems strange as he lifts into the air at 50%
Guilds can achieve this by getting Malygos to transition whilst they are standing in double spark residue. 11% is quite an impressive number, perhaps ranged was being stacked, however it's not difficult to get considerably more than "5% extra" off during the transition if you're creative with timing.
The static fields are roughly 10% of the drakes health (10k) per second. You probably could stack tons of healers and avoid moving, but i'm sure everyone can agree thats a pretty silly thing to do. How are you having a hard time with people 'moving together'? If it's due to the 3-d nature of the phase, tell everyone to only ever be at the boss's eye level. You can easily put a symbol on a drake and have people watch the minimap/ping to be sure they are in the right spot. Fixing that is much more important than using creative strats to compensate for peoples inability to do something simple, such as 'group up at boss eye level, and always move to the right'.
Some people are mentioning getting Maly down to numbers like 11% in phase 1, to me this seems strange as he lifts into the air at 50%, i think the most we've been able to squeeze out of him inbetween phase 1 and 2 is maybe 5% extra. Are you stacking range dps for the sole purpose of doing alot of dmg in that window?
Also in phase 3, is it possible to outheal the static fields and the targetted beam by Maly if you stack healers, or do you have to move out of the field? Having a hard time getting our raidgroup to move together...
For the transition, they're intentionally manipulating the sparks to always be stacked. They give 50% per application, but stack multiplicatively and not additively. The first spark gives 50% more, so you're doing 150% damage. The second spark gives 50% more OF that 150%, so you're actually doing 225% of your original damage.
In phase 3, it's not really smart to outheal the static fields. Just have people stick together in one large pack. If you're having a hard time of getting your raid group to move together, then you need to find new raiders. You MUST move out of the field. You really also need people using shields, though you'll hear stories about how some guilds get away without them. I'm not going to bother with those because you're having trouble moving out of the static fields, and the tactics for being able to heal through the beams involves something much more complicated.
02/25/09, 5:38 PM
