Yeah, I think a lot of what you see with guilds' approaches to these fights is a reflection of those guilds' strengths and weaknesses, and their composition.
For Nef phase 1, we had literally zero people in our raid with any sort of snare talents. We have no mages specced Improved Blizzard, no hunters with Entrapment, etc. If we had people with those specs, we probably would've tried AoE a bit more. We had Green Drakonids our first week or two also, which are basically immune to Earthbind. Without any effective way of really containing them, we pretty much wrote off AoE entirely from the start.
Nef phase 1 was probably the most frustrating fight in the game, for me, to learn, just because it offered absolutely no feedback whatsoever. We had no fucking clue what you were supposed to do. I remember hours spent trying to kite the drakonids with piercing howl and coordinated heal aggro and such, trying to see if maybe something would happen if we survived for long enough.
Most painful are memories of trying basically the exact strat we use now, around September 20th or so, and calling for wipes right around the 2-minute mark as the 5th and 6th Chromatics came up, because we were losing control. Back then, the conventional wisdom (haha) was that you needed to kill 10 Chromatic Drakonids to start phase 2. We had to have literally been two or three kills away from making him land, but turned away from a DPS strat for a few days because we thought we weren't even getting 2/3 of the way to where we needed to be. Ugh.
My guild's general philosophy towards this type of thing has been "if it bleeds, we can kill it". The first thing we always try in a new encounter is to kill the enemy as quickly as possible, ignoring all elegant strategy or control. We add the control and elegance in as needed, but only enough that allows us to continue stabbing/smashing. It works suprisingly well. A good example is our first attempt on ebonroc where we boneheadedly fought through what must have been three million health gained through shadow and killed him after 20 minutes. We added the taunt rotation later. I view it as the first test of a quality encounter: if we can't beat it by caveman stab/smash then the fight must have at least some depth. Needless to say, Ebonroc failed miserably (Flamegor did too, haha!).
So when we saw Legionnaires and found out they had all these nifty abilities when MC'd, we thought "oh that's neat" and then proceeded to kill them as soon as they came out of the gates. Of course the dragonkin weren't handled so easily.
Yeah, we're like that too. Our comparative strengths are awesome rogues, warriors and mages. We lack a lot of the finesse some of the best guilds do. We can power through a lot of content simply by reacting on the spot and doing high dps. I guess it's because we have a ton of old quakers on board. I'm the only old EQ'er going "Can we PLEASE try some tactics this time? ...oh never mind, that worked".
Originally Posted by Arawethion,February 28th, 2006 @ 2:28AM
Even our Razorgore strat is this odd thing where we have a Warr take control halfway through and aggro every mob in the room onto Raz with the AoE fireball. Then he releases and trains the whole pack of them around in figure 8's for the rest of the fight.
Hah, we use this as well. Works nicely - if the warrior receives enough healing :)
We are still learning the Razorgore encounter but I would have to agree with everything said so far: It is very unique and exciting, and really pushes us to work together and gel as a team. Tonight we go back for (I think) the fourth official night of attempts (fourth time was the winning rip for us on Ragnaros).
Things that have helped us so far include that PW:S on the Shamans to prevent daze (tonight I think we're going to enchant a few more Shammy boots with the Run Speed) and we are still having our MT act as the controller.
If we have five shamans, should they all be kiting? So far we have had a backup in the center, covering additional heals on those shamans as they get hit and to pick up if one dies. In fact, I think on our last attempt we may have had six shamans, but only four designated kiters at the start...
Also...someone alluded earlier to yelling in vent to pick up slack...and this is something we are noticing as well; some of our corner groups are so effective right now that the rogues are worried they aren't helping enough...ie they've totally blown through the spawns and want to help out in some other capacity...if all the mages are killed and all you have left is Legionnaires and Dragonkin while a few eggs remain...should the rogues be put on some other task?
Originally Posted by Kerulak,March 14th, 2006 @ 1:44PM
stuff
As a general rule, use all the shamans you can for kiting. That gives you less legos running wild if a shaman goes down and, in turn, less dead healers after the legos rip them up. Just have the extra 1-2 shaman eyeing up places where totems get dropped out of place due to lag or mages popping them.
Also, as a quick note for the shaman, generally avoid run speed on boots for kiting legos. If everyone is performing up to par you'll actually outrun the legos by so much that they'll start cutting across the middle and/or you'll actually catch them on a later run.
Yeah basically. I have a set that I swap to just for Razor with a little more dodge, stam, and +damage to ensure they stick a little better and that I can take a few more swings should I get caught.
Originally Posted by Brown Bread,February 28th, 2006 @ 12:06PM
I love Razorgore, I love running around knowing I have like 8-10 angry mobs after me and they can't do anything.
Most SF/JfT shamans absolutely love this fight due to how much reliance it has on us. I unfortunately don't care for this fight due to the fact there's a certain JfT shaman who ALWAYS dies (healgro imo) during this encounter and it never fails that all his mobs immediately go for me.
8-10 angry mobs after me, and then another half dozen right on top of me. It's a miracle I survive as many encounters as I do. :P
Originally Posted by Relwin,March 14th, 2006 @ 2:55PM
Yeah basically. I have a set that I swap to just for Razor with a little more dodge, stam, and +damage to ensure they stick a little better and that I can take a few more swings should I get caught.
We use frost shock to help get them in tow, earthshock only if they're sticking to someone. Most of our shamans use the PvP trinketto help with the dazing. Swiftness potions have also been used by some shamans. I have a problem with most speed increasements though (we all use to use the boot speed enchant) due to catching the tail of my train.
Pretty much all I personally cast is earthbind and frostshock. Occasionally earthshock, mana spring, and GoA get used. The only real excitement is when I get to NS Chain Lightning a group of Legions when a shaman does fall.
This is also the only time I use my shield while raiding. When phase two arrives, it's back to the healing. :P
Originally Posted by Relwin,March 14th, 2006 @ 2:22PM
As a general rule, use all the shamans you can for kiting. That gives you less legos running wild if a shaman goes down and, in turn, less dead healers after the legos rip them up. Just have the extra 1-2 shaman eyeing up places where totems get dropped out of place due to lag or mages popping them.
I agree. We usually run with 6 shamans and we tried the only four kite thing but if a shaman goes down, it's still hard for another shaman to try and get all the adds. The only real attention getting spell we have is Chain Lightning and that will only grab 3 mobs total.
Plus it makes it easier on all the shamans if they're having to kite less mobs. The longer your train gets, the more likelyhood of a cut-off.
We dont get many shaman's out for that encounter well at least we didnt when we were learning it. So we use a hybrid of that combined with kill groups and Mcing.
I remember when learning Razorgore, we tried a lot of stuff but generally getting overrun with 3-5 eggs left (back when Blizzard was still juggling with the cooldowns on destroying eggs).
Then the NA video came out and someone from our guild saw it and suggested we try that. I think we tried getting the kiting perfected for a week or so, but we could never do it, we plainly sucked badly at it. Then we switched to just killing every orc entering the room.
At the beginning we had to use some fears on the last mass buildups of orcs to win, but now with people geared up (and maybe subtle nerfs to the spawn, hard to tell now) it seems ridiculously easy :blink:
We are of course missing out on the fun of having stupid orcs running around in circles though :P
Originally Posted by Taeme,February 28th, 2006 @ 7:47AM
God the raid where we had two new shamans, five shaman total, and one got an important phone call midway through was just beautiful. We didn't wipe and we didn't have any extra dead. It's more than a rite of passage, it's proof of worth.
Razorgore is still one of the best designed fights in the game. Makes me wish BWL hadn't been so rushed.
See I don't remember this attempt because I was on the phone, but the kiting strategy is the most beautiful thing in the entire world. It's a pile of swirling legionnares that makes sure we don't have any shamans worse than Gonktarg in our guild.
I am in an Alliance guild, and we also use the kiting method. Its alot harder for us to do it this way (no totems) so instead while we were learning it we would go and grab the Hakkar buff (run speed). So if anyone is looking here for ideas, that worked well for us in learning. Also, we use paladins to controll the eggs. We use paladins to controll for 2 reasons 1) they are self sufficient, if they get donked around while in rotation, they can heal themself and not make a priest risk healing them and drawing agro and 2) after phase 1 ends all they have to do is bubble to shed all agro and then the MT can juse sunder away and pick him right up. Also i read above that people were having trouble with getting dazed, to solve that all you have to do is have your kiters learn to side strafe, it doesnt allow them to cast Dazed onyou then. Just my 2 cents from an alliance point of view because i know alot of people look here for questions to be answered.
Originally Posted by Eurus,March 21st, 2006 @ 11:56AM
Where can we get these things called Shamans?
i heard they are impossible to kill
They're the paladin hero class. As part of the quest, you betray the alliance and join the horde. If they look like orcs or trolls or cows, its just because they're wearing a costume.
02/28/06, 1:22 PM
