We did our first Yogg-Saron kill some days ago, this would be 10-man. I don't remember the exact group setup but we had a balance between ranged and melee DPS. We had only 1 tank, a frost DK.
Phase 1 was easy enough, once we got everyone to understand that clouds are not to be used as short cuts instead of running around.

Phase 2 was by far the hardest of the 3, and it took us a good number of attempts to get through it. In the brain rooms we divided the four melee DPS in 2 groups that each went to the right or left killing tentacles as we progressed. We had usually about 30-45 seconds left on the insane timer to put dps on the brain.

Phase 3 wasn't so hard once we got an understanding of what to do. I see alot of you did it with melee on the boss with ranged dealing with adds. We had the Immortals tanked close to the boss to get splash damage onto the boss. Melee had their backs turned to the boss at all times so his gazes was not an issue. I saw an earlier post about ranged losing alot of dps by being on the boss, since they have to turn around all the time, will bring this up to discussion in the guild chat.

In phase 2 I experienced something rather odd. I was running for a portal to enter the brain room, and just as I clicked it I was grabbed by a Constrictor Tentacle. So I entered the brain room and was teleported back out to the tentacle. The others quickly freed me but now I was outside. And when the insane timer ran out I suddenly popped out infront of the boss and was insane. The game mechanics must have registered me as inside the brainroom when I was infact outside. Anyone else experienced this?

Yes I have seen this a couple of times - there are a number of bugs related to being targeted right as you enter the brain room. Not much you can do about it. It's rare enough that there's no real point in trying to prevent it.

This is entirely preventable, wait for the constrictor to spawn before taking your portal, you will only lose a couple seconds off portal dps time but you should be ahead on bottom anyways if you are assigning people portals and tentacles properly. There are a fair amount of bad RNG things that can happen to you on this fight but most all of them have a work around such as this which is why with maybe one exception on 0 light I wouldn't say this is an RNG fight.

Warlocks are the exception to this they don't lose any time really. Also assuming you are using freya and filled up sanity before p3 nobody really loses much time on the boss if played properly.

Tonight my guild will finally begin working on yogg after getting to him with not enough raid time the last three weeks.
I have searched quite a bit for this and keep coming up short in two questions I have about the 10man encounter:

First, when the portals in phase 2 come up I have seen mixed reactions on whether to send in a healer with the melee group on the brain. Currently I am assuming that if your melee know how to look away from the skulls they will take little damage, so learning the encounter it may be more forgiving for them to have a healer.

Second, is there a maximum number of people you are allowed to send in the portals? I figure if not I would send in 4 melee and a healer.

Current setup has us looking to have:
1 tank (Prot war)
2 Heals (Shaman/Pally)
5 Melee DPS (2 rogue, 1 enh shaman, 1 ret pally, 1 arms war)
2 Ranged DPS (1 lock, 1 boomkin).

Any help would be great.

You can only send 4 people down below, so 4 + 1 isn't an option. As to which you should send, on the 10 man especially you should send all DPS. With your group composition you probably want to send the ret, enhance, and both rogues (especially if they're combat) down to the brain. Hybrids are great for learning since they can help "heal" down below while you learn skulls. Divine Storm + Cloak + Maelstrom procs should be enough to keep you up just fine while you learn to dodge skulls down below.

Blow a hero on your best wave (Going to be icecrown, especially during learning) and go nuts.

Just make sure your melee are decursed before going below, a stray CoD + reflects = party time is over.

Its not worth it to send a healer for 'learning', as this will greatly impact your performance on a kill. You need to kill the tentacles quickly, to avoid getting another crusher above to spawn. Not to mention, with 5 melee your extra up top (or 2 if you send a healer) are going to be rather bored until things get stunned.

In 10 man, you have 4 portals (10 portals in 25 man).

When learning the encounter, I suggest including a healer in your brain group. Skull damage isn't the only damage that your melee take in the Illusions. They also take reflect damage from DPSing the tentacles inside. Originally I'd go in as resto but as we get better I spec elemental and I can still effectively kill tentacles as well as spot heal here and there. It can also add more DPS on the brain.

It seems your group is melee heavy. DPS on the crushers outside will be tight as you generally would like ranged on those. The extra melee you dont send in to the brain can kill corruptors and constrictors and when the stun happens can help burn the crusher. They just have to be aware to not be in melee of the crusher when it's active.

Good luck!

We were talking about this in the ret topic as well, some people experienced it but the most experienced ret palas all said it was due to DS healing and such, which I still don't agree with.

Have your pala be aware of the grid agro indicator, if he's red, make him run to the ranged camp I suppose. And to be sure, make him stop using DS and see if that fixes it.

We ran with 4 healers and didn't encounter any issues.
A good tip for the silence is to use Aura Mastery. Even if you only have one paladin, you could neutralize every second one and you could have the tanks use a cooldown if the silence is going to hit and they drop.
The more DPS you have, the easier the fight is in all phases.

We did it yesterday (right before the nerf \o/) with 5 healers, though one of them was dead from the middle of p2 until the end. Healers actually managed to outrange the silence, which seems to be 50y range from the center of yogg-saron. Standing at max healing range with tanks being not inside the boss did it.

I need some advice for my guild doing phase 1. Currently we use a 3 tank rotation (Warrior, Druid, Prot Pally). We spawn 1 additional add at the beginning of the fight. Each tank holds their add until 40% then runs it into the middle where a group of ranged finish it off. The problems we have seem to come from either DPS killing adds too early or the tank having to take a crazy path to reach the middle to get his add there. When he does this, it causes a weird hiccup in our rhythm, and things get thrown off course.

We've reached phase 2 multiple times, but it just seems we can't get there reliably so I am looking for ways to improve. Keep in mind we are a more casual guild, raiding 9 hours a week, so I try to use strategies that minimize movement and other factors that your more hardcore WoW players would have no problem with. We initially on our first night tried having 1 tank stay in the middle and taunt, and I've considered going back to it, but that has given us its own set of problems as well.

Any advice is appreciated.

Assuming you're talking about 25 man, the 3rd tank seems a bit excessive. Two should be plenty. Have them alternate pickups and drags; ie. Tank #1 takes Spawns #1, #3, #5, #7 and #9. Tank #2 takes Spawns #2, #4, #6 and #8. So one tank will always be grabbing a fresh spawn, whilst the other is dragging the low one into the middle. I guess the most important part is for your tanks to call for the ranged to stop and resume DPS at critical moments. If the mob is at 40% HP, your tank should already be on his way back to the center, and he needs to judge how long it's going to take him to get there. At the current rate of DPS (TimeToDie is a great mod for tracking this) does he have enough time? Or does he need them to stop DPS and wait?

Bottom line is, your ranged DPS need to wake up. If the target is below 10% and it's not within range of Sara, they shouldn't be casting anything. But your tank can guide them with stop/go calls in-case they can't adjust.

Assign melee to interrupt all casts above 50% HP. Once the mob is below 50%, it's probably mobile, so the melee will be moving away from it, and getting started on the new spawn. We keep an Elemental Shaman on the <50% interrupts due them having the lowest cooldown ranged interrupt (any spec Shaman will do, really), but just make sure they're careful and don't get blown up for standing too close. Your Mages can be an absolute last resort in the event your Shaman can't get enough range due to clouds/positioning. Melee will always interrupt the new spawns whilst the ranged are finishing off the old one, so you should never really see any casts going off. Predicting the casts is very, very easy. As a Rogue, I can get through 2 GCD's on a new spawn before it will start casting. It's literally reached the point where I don't even bother waiting for the cast - I see a new spawn, cycle through to my 3rd GCD and overlap it with a kick. 99% of the time, I catch the cast just as it begins, before anyone even has a chance to react. By the time the 2nd cast occurs, it's already on it's way to the middle, ready to blow.

We found out that 2 can be a little tight at times. An accidental aggro pull while dragging the guardian, or an extra spawn, or terrible cloud alignment which makes a tank run in semi circles - all these factors justify having a 3rd tank. We usually use a feral druid in dps gear for that.

Tha patch notes say that the clouds are now "vocal" about touching a player. I haven't been at Yogg this week, so I couldn't see it. Can anyone tell me how it is now?

It says it right there in the chat, "ominous cloud begins to bubble after being touched by X"... well, I don't remember exact quote, but you immediately know when it happened and who did it. And it works perfectly, too, I haven't seen such nice cloud dodging in ages

Our preferred way is to tank them right on top of Sara. We use two tanks who alternate between the adds. Melee stays in unless they get Sara's Fervor. Tanks move slightly clockwise behind one of the clouds and then waits for them to cross each other on the far side of Sara. Once they cross, melee moves through the center to where the clouds previously just split, moves slightly clockwise and repeats.

Ranged follows a predesignated marked player who knows how to navigate the clouds. Anyone with a bad connection stands by the door and waits for phase two.

We normally hit phase 2 with one guardian still up but being killed. On a bad pull we may end up with one about to die and a second guardian.

Only people who normally hit clouds are ranged, as they move a lot. Melee almost never hits a cloud.

Our guild ferry's the adds from the DPS group, which is stationed by the door, to the middle. We have a druid ferry in his DPS gear, which works very well, and we have a warrior in the middle and a paladin in the group to tank the adds.

With this method, we found that calling for a stop DPS in the main group when the add is at 35% was the best course of action. Between dots and reaction time, the adds usually are at about 5-10% when they get to Sara and we have 4 ranged dedicated to dodging clouds and finishing them off when they get there.

On another note, have they decreased the spawn timer on crusher tentacles? It may just be that we're getting more familiar with the encounter, but from talking to the top group it seemed like it was easier for them to keep up last night than normal.

After some thought I believe we will try this strategy for phase 1 this week. Note that I try to focus our strats to be as minimal movement as possible as that seems to work best for our guild.

1 Prot Pally in the doorway. Stays there the whole time, picking up any and all adds.

1 Ferry Tank, a Feral Druid, who will be taunting adds off the prot tank when they reach 35% and running them towards the middle.

1 Prot Warrior standing in the center, avoiding clouds, and taunting off the feral while range burn it down.

Some Hunters using misdirects / distracting shot to pull any adds to the Prot Pally.

My only concern is with this new taunt change that makes a target immune for a short time after being taunted is that the feral will taunt from the doorway, run towards the mid, and the prot warrior may not be able to taunt off the feral.

Any thoughts on this strat, has anyone tried something similar?

(Of course the basic melee will be staying at the door, and a few ranged in mid to pop them when low.)

Why is the Druid even necessary? Have the Warrior taunt it and pull it in himself. Or even better, swap the two around, as the Paladin has two taunts and better "ranged threat generation" in order to keep it on him whilst it travels to the middle.

1 tank, who stands in the middle picking up every add while melee weaves in and out leaving at ~250k-300k hp with a roaming ranged camp who dodges clouds but tries to stay as stationary as possible. Worst case scenario a cloud is 50 yards away and the ranged camp is inbetween it and the tank (rare) = Misdirect. Rogues conserve energy for kick until they leave, Designated casters stay alert on interupts after rogues leave.

Good call on having the Paladin in the middle. Agreed the extra druid running back and forth is likely not necessary.

How close do you feel is appropriate to position the door group? We were standing between Freya's two glowing green pillars, but that is well outside of the taunt range of anyone in the middle. Is that still an appropriate distance, and just have the mid tank run towards the door to grab it then run back to mid?

One of my guildies was kind enough to upload our Yogg One Light kill to WCM. Putting all the other garbage aside, feel free to watch the first few minutes of it for a demonstration of how you can effectively position the raid at the door and use two tanks alternating Guardians. We use a DK and a Paladin, but any tanks will do.

TDM - One Light in the Darkness (Rogue PoV) By Veevee - World of Warcraft Movies

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