Is there any way to use more than 9 melee - including tanks? Spreading into 3 camps 3 players each prevents chain gibs until 10+ stacks, but anything more than this is too much. Trying to have offtanks somewhere away seems 2-3k DPS loss, which is barely worth it. Haven't tried 4 camps, but I can't see it working with Charges, there's not enough place around him to dodge them without chaining too much.
Seems fairly irritating to already bench melees for Hard modes.
Haven't tried 4 camps, but I can't see it working with Charges, there's not enough place around him to dodge them without chaining too much.
Without getting deeper into this discussion again, since it's still forbidden, let me tell you that we have had some pretty decent tries with 4 groups as an earlier poster advised.
Without getting deeper into this discussion again, since it's still forbidden, let me tell you that we have had some pretty decent tries with 4 groups as an earlier poster advised.
Well, it's more of general positioning issue than "hard mode" discussion. I wasn't sure if there's enough place to put 4 groups around him, as with only 3 it's very limiting for melee. Doesn't this put 2 groups in front/parry area? Not that it matters much, since his swing timer is so fast that bit extra from parry won't change much.
Thanks for the responses about the hard-mode phase 1 roster. We now successfully get to Thorim with everybody alive before 3 mins.
But I have a question about MT-healing. We usually get to 10 charges in Thorim with some dead dps, but sometimes tanks die before. We have 2 holy paladins assigned to MT healing and also a discipline priest. The problem comes when 1 or even the 2 paladins have to move out of a lightning charge or a blizzard. To provide more information, we make 5 ranged groups of 3 people mixing healers and ranged dps. This way, the chain lightning are not such a challenge. However, whenever a MT healer has to move, the tanks are in severe danger. Is there some safe spot (lightning charge and blizzard away) where the MT healers can be standing?
Could you please give some advice about the MT healers positioning concerning this problem? Thanks a lot in advance.
Thanks for the responses about the hard-mode phase 1 roster. We now successfully get to Thorim with everybody alive before 3 mins.
But I have a question about MT-healing. We usually get to 10 charges in Thorim with some dead dps, but sometimes tanks die before. We have 2 holy paladins assigned to MT healing and also a discipline priest. The problem comes when 1 or even the 2 paladins have to move out of a lightning charge or a blizzard. To provide more information, we make 5 ranged groups of 3 people mixing healers and ranged dps. This way, the chain lightning are not such a challenge. However, whenever a MT healer has to move, the tanks are in severe danger. Is there some safe spot (lightning charge and blizzard away) where the MT healers can be standing?
Could you please give some advice about the MT healers positioning concerning this problem? Thanks a lot in advance.
In P2? Charge can target any particular area as far as I've observed.
Originally Posted by Namok
The problem comes when 1 or even the 2 paladins have to move out of a lightning charge or a blizzard.
Could you please give some advice about the MT healers positioning concerning this problem? Thanks a lot in advance.
The "2" is your problem. Tell your healers to stay spread out so you all don't end up moving at the same time during a charge. When you break into the upper regions of charges, you really should have everyone healing the tank in absence of raid healing. Raid damage is pretty minimal and infrequent enough on normal mode to accommodate a heavier tank healing arrangement.
I've read this thread through, and think I have the info right. Here is what I'm suggesting to our raid leaders, but I was hoping to get some feedback here first. Please accept my appology for posting this wall of text
First, we are routinely seeing 3 rogues and 3 hunters. We are also often physical dps heavy. I would suggest all physical dps in the arena, and all casters in the hall, but since we normally don’t have many casters, we might need to keep 1 hunter with them. No more than 9 should go in the hall, less if we need to to keep the arena alive.
For the hallway
Drunky is right. Survival is key, and we all need to focus more on that. If we could possibly keep all the physical dps in the arena, I would suggest cc’ing one mob in each hall group, focus the caster, then the melee. After the first miniboss, kill the first 2 casters, and then move quickly up the stairs.
Stop just below the 2nd miniboss and clean up a couple if we have too many mobs. If not, or once there are few enough to handle, pull the boss. Everyone needs to get off the stairs and spread out. Kill the miniboss, then the adds. No one should touch the melee mobs on the stairs until the casters are dead, and until the gauntlet leader says so. That way, if a mage needs to sheep one he/she can (or other cc). Also, with the tank moving so fast, he may not have enough agro to keep you from pulling one if you hit it. Aoe should not be used here.
For the arena
We need to disarm the champions. This would allow more dps on them. If we can focus them down, and not worry about the whirlwind, it would make things less chaotic. As for the evokers, keep 2 rogues on them to interrupt, and kill them once the champions are dead. The interrupt is the most important part. If that happens, they can stay up while the raid focuses on the champions, who in my opinion are the most dangerous. Having Mitsumi on the champions to me is more important than on the evokers to make sure whirlwinds don’t kill people.
The raid should be focused in the middle of the arena, with the tanks 10 yards or so apart to the north and south. Mobs that jump down from Thorim’s area will aggro the closest person, which would be the tank. To keep all 4 healers from being slowed together, have them at each corner, just far enough apart to keep them all from being hit at the same time.
For phase 2
Melee can get in trouble from the lightning. If we use the same strat as on Kel, we should be able to negate most of the jumps. Place no more than 3 together, stacked on each corner of the boss. Stay at max melee range so that you are far from the other stacks. The tank shouldn’t have to move the boss. Even if the pillar get’s activated near them, as long as all others get out, the healers should be able to keep him alive.
Again, please correct me if I said anything incorrect, or if you have a better idea. I'd like to not wipe 16 times again like last night.
The "2" is your problem. Tell your healers to stay spread out so you all don't end up moving at the same time during a charge. When you break into the upper regions of charges, you really should have everyone healing the tank in absence of raid healing. Raid damage is pretty minimal and infrequent enough on normal mode to accommodate a heavier tank healing arrangement.
I think that you are talking about normal mode, I meant hard-mode. In p2, I would say that raid damage is anything but minimal. That's way we need our 3 MT healers to move the less the better.
Anyway, thanks for the answers. We will try to stack the 3 MT healers together under thorim's ledge. There is only one more thing that I'm concerned about. If they are all standing in that place, when the blizzard hits them... Should they move away or just expect raid healers to care about them?
Last night was our first full night of Thorim 25 man. (We had no issues with him in Normal)
What we went with was:
Gauntlet: (7) 1 Prot Warrior, Disc Priest, Resto Shaman, 2xMage, Arms Warr, Ele Shaman (Bursty DPS)
In the Arena we had Prot Pally, DK AE tanking with Feral Druid charging Evokers -- in hindsight we should have had him pulling the champions out of the raid and ranging down.
My main question is: When do the arena mobs stop spawning?
Some accounts say when you engage the 2nd miniboss, but I'm thinking that's just for the acolyte packs in the guantlet. If so, we may look to increase more DPS in the gauntlet. Also how much time are people taking to get through the gauntlet?
I scribbled a quick birds eye of Thorim's room, showing the position of the charge orbs. Entrance is bottom, gauntlet tunnel and lever is off to the left. The thing to note is that you have one in each corner, an additional orb on the right quadrant, and two additional orbs on the bottom quadrant.
Statistically speaking, that means the bottom quadrant will have the most movement, while the left quadrant is the least. Top quadrant is also 'as light' as the left quadrant but with less room to spread out for chain lightning.
In P2? Charge can target any particular area as far as I've observed.
For my guild I created two screenshots with paint overlays to describe Lightning Charge specifically in order to fix the massive movement our tanks were making in order to avoid it. This was causing melee death and poor dps time.
The second shows tank positioning and also you should be able to see a very nice spot for healers to stand either behind the tanks (under the ledge) or in front of the Tunnel gate.
We spent a solid four hours on Thorim last night, albeit undermanned. Its always super rewarding to kill the boss after the raid leader says the next attempt will be the last one.
This is the first fight in Ulduar where just about every raider had a very specific job since the whole "Prioratize killing Evokers and Champions first" strat didn't work out at all for us. We had thrown all of our melee DPS into the arena and all of our ranged/casters into the gauntlet. The arena team was split up into several smaller groups, three people were assigned to killing Champions, three to Evokers and the rest were on Warbringer/Commoner duty. Meanwhile the healers in the arena were positioned along the wall underneath Thorim with a tank sitting in front of them ready to pick up any adds that might chase the healers from pulling aggro. We did this because in our first couple of hours of attempts healers would drop like flies as they'd pull aggro on new mobs that weren't immediately spotted by our tanks. Also this helped with the issue of slow cast times as only one healer would ever be effected by the debuff.
Meanwhile in the gauntlet we were using crowd control to keep the incoming damage to our lone tank at a minimum, once the first miniboss was dead our mages were very on the ball with sheeping Honor Guards that were coming down the stairs. We were pushing forward while killing adds instead of stopping to fight. When we reached the top of the stairs we finished off whatever Acolytes that might still be up and kept the Honor Guards sheeped while we killed the second miniboss. Once he was down we finished off the adds and jumped down to what turned out to be a trivial phase 2.
It took us a long time to figure out that we should split the arena team into even smaller teams that were responsible for killing particular adds, as well as the healer positioning. For anyone going into this fight, if you find that your healers are dying too quickly or that you're getting overwhelmed by adds, I'd recommend trying some of our ideas.
In P2? Charge can target any particular area as far as I've observed.
WIth the hardmode ban on this boss lifted, here is an accurate picture describing the safe zones in phase 2. Theres a bit of confusion on Lightning Charges and if 'no part of the room is safe!' This will clear it up and let discussion move on to other important aspects of the encounter. I've seen some of the previous pics, but they aren't very precise.
There are two safe zones in Thorims room. Safe means that Lightning charge will never hit them, assuming the boss is tanked perfectly central. Different areas of the safe zone have a different margin of error from where you can stand and avoid being hit.
This picture is accurate to within 1-2 steps, with regards to the safe zones.
The Top Safe Zone is long enough such that you can fit two/three groups in it (one directly under the ledge, one for your MT's and one half way between them. Blizzard will pass directly over the area where the outer group stands. The where-to-stand margin of error is high for the outer group, it should never get hit by Lightning Charge. The MT and Middle group often should consider doing sidesteps for their Lightning Charges, as the margin of error for those spots is smaller.
The Side Safe Zone can also fit two groups in a similar fashion. Again, the outer group will have Blizzard pass directly over them at times, but has a high margin of error. The inner group's standing margin of error is small, and they should consider sidestepping left/right to avoid the relevant charges.
Deciding how best to make use of these two zones is an important aspect of phase 2 setup, and its importantance is further excasberated in the Hard Mode. The first choices would be:
1 - Your Shadow Priest who is Mind Controlling.
2 - MT Healers (Holy Pally + Disc Priest)
That will be the obvious first couple people. But you can fit more in the safe zones if needed, and whether you're prepared to accept the risk of Blizzard passing over people. After several attempts we still haven't found the medium. We tried putting an excess of healers in there, but Blizzard was more troublesome than expected. And the far side of the room then was healer-light. The top zone Pallys can be placed under the ledge and told to Beacon themselves. This didn't work as nicely for us as expected, so another raid-healer was put in the middle of the top safe zone to overlook them.
The main issue i've seen keep happening as a common theme on the fight, is Sif's insta-gib combos. Frost Nova + (Chain Lightning, AOE Frostbolt, Single Frostbolt, Blizzard) hurts. Frost resistance could be considered, but i'm curious to know how many guilds actually have opted to use Fr gear. Blizzard can be negated completely by grouping everyone in the inner-ring, but then you increase the amount of people hit via frost nova and introduce triple lightning charge bounces, which in turn further increases the chance of a instagib combo.
After many attempts of inner position groups (removing Blizzard from the fight) and then some inner+outer groups attempts (Blizzard hitting the outer) we still haven't found a happy medium for what positions work best. Originally we tried a Hexagon on the inner ring with groups of (3), then tested a Pentagon with groups of (2) and the extra 5 around the outer ring spread out. (Assuming you run with ~15 ranged+healers, which is reasonable)
Both setups seemed to have pro's and con's. I'm curious as to what positioning people have found is more beneficial. For us, neither has been 'the obvious easy choice we should use from now on!' so far.
20% FR (1ring + belt or boots) negates the "insta-gib" effect of Sif. If you're going to park a shadow priest under the ledge in blizzard to MC, might as well have him wear full FR.
With the spike damage going on toward the end of the fight, from both chain lightning and damage on the tanks, you want your healers moving as little as possible. Prioritize them for safe zones over ranged dps. The rest of the raid shouldn't be taking much blizzard damage, if any. Wherever your raid healers are located, they should be in range of everybody else in the raid.
The main issue i've seen keep happening as a common theme on the fight, is Sif's insta-gib combos. Frost Nova + (Chain Lightning, AOE Frostbolt, Single Frostbolt, Blizzard) hurts. Frost resistance could be considered, but i'm curious to know how many guilds actually have opted to use Fr gear. Blizzard can be negated completely by grouping everyone in the inner-ring, but then you increase the amount of people hit via frost nova and introduce triple lightning charge bounces, which in turn further increases the chance of a instagib combo.
We did in fact use FrR Gear, namly Belt and Cloak Enchant für everyone. Thus putting the Raid, counting Aura in, at 200 FrR. This prevented Insta-Gibs and the healers said that it feels overall more easily healable.
After many attempts of inner position groups (removing Blizzard from the fight) and then some inner+outer groups attempts (Blizzard hitting the outer) we still haven't found a happy medium for what positions work best. Originally we tried a Hexagon on the inner ring with groups of (3), then tested a Pentagon with groups of (2) and the extra 5 around the outer ring spread out. (Assuming you run with ~15 ranged+healers, which is reasonable)
Both setups seemed to have pro's and con's. I'm curious as to what positioning people have found is more beneficial. For us, neither has been 'the obvious easy choice we should use from now on!' so far.
We used a mix of your setups. Starting with 3-man groups. Once the Stacks on Thorim reached 10, one of each 3-man Party moved 10y back to avoid CL-Insta-Gibs.
We still used some other tweaks consering Blizzard, but i can't go yet into too much detail.
Basicly your ideas seem right, but as usual practice is a must to perfect this.
Are you sure that Lightning Charge damage is increased by Thorim's buff? I can't show numbers from WWS and I don't know how to use WoL, but we had this around 2 minutes into the fight with Thorim:
[23:55:16.363] Thorim Lightning Charge Puls 18285 (O: 877)
I guess the O: 877 notates resist. Shouldn't this number be alot higher if LC was indeed affected by Thorim's buff?
Forgot about this and saw a recent time when I fucked missing getting hit by lightning charge last week and it is definitely multiplied by the Charges on Thorim (on hard mode at least). And consider this damage would be ~43% higher if not for my 30% AOE damage reduction.
Forgot about this and saw a recent time when I fucked missing getting hit by lightning charge last week and it is definitely multiplied by the Charges on Thorim (on hard mode at least). And consider this damage would be ~43% higher if not for my 30% AOE damage reduction.
Chainlighting is multi target damage, therefore not considered AoE.
Edit: I really should use my brain for thinking, sorry.
Last edited by TimWischmeier : 05/23/09 at 3:40 PM.
We had a couple of hours on this guy last night. When we got the raid healing sorted, tanks died. When we got the tank healing sorted the raid died.
We're trying to have the offtank taunt as soon as unbalancing strike lands. However, looking through death logs there was often 2-3 melee hits after UB strike. The offtank assured us that he was taunting as soon as it landed, but those logs seem to suggest otherwhise. Has anyone else noticed the problem of slow target changes or is our OT just making excuses?
Can I get some indication of how many growths people are getting on their kills? Our best tries fall apart at about 11 stacks and I don't see things being healable much past that.
Unbalancing Strike doesn't reset his swing timer. Check the timestamps. It's very difficult to avoid melee swings post-Strike completely, due to the fact that he can end up swinging twice in less than a second after an Unbalancing Strike. 3, unless you're at a ridiculous number of stacks, is close to 2 seconds, though. That's probably slower than your tank should be, especially if he's used to the fight.
If you mean regular-mode kills, my guild's first kill appears to have been at 15 stacks. (All three tanks were dead at that point.) Attempts seem to start going south at about 11-12, but we're not exactly pushing the limits of what healing classes could theoretically do.
05/11/09, 7:06 PM
