Well we gave it around 4 hours of attempts last night, learned some stuff so I think it was a success. I can say without a doubt we just are not killing the mobs fast enough. We tried focus fire on one side(green), aoe on the other(bronze), with the healers in the middle. The healing aggro would eat us alive. Tried putting the healers on the throne, and aoeing everything, healing aggro got us again.

Is healing aggro a big problem for everyone? I was putting a renew on a couple of tanks and would pull aggro from the cave. Tanks would get them off, but by that time we where all healing so much that it just started all over again.

The whole thing was falling apart atound 30 adds down, till then we where all up, then BAM, all down right at phase 2 or 38 adds down.

Balance your DPS between the sides. For Bronze there's really no reason to not use rogues. It helps to have at least two warriors per side, and maybe even bear tanks if you have sufficient priests and shamans. They need to be quick about containing and not letting mobs slip past them. Liberal use of shouts, cleaves, and whirlwind works well to keep mobs on the warrior. But remember, your warriors' job is to contain, not dps. This just takes practice.

We keep our healers about 15-20 yards back from the spawn points. If a mob slips past the melee toward them, a hunter or mage picks it up and kites till the melee can grab it.

Set up an assist person on each side. If everyone is diligent about using their assist, the mob should die in seconds. There's no secret trick to it. Just assist and burn. It takes some practice, but you should see noticeable improvement.

You can all log off, start event with a hunter, see colors, then log back on again, then take a break.

We do a pretty cool trick for managing that, though I don't know if Gurg wants to make that public knowledge yet.

We have Red/Bronze this week. We tried it last night with only 2 mages, of course, that did not go well. AOEing the red side, with mages, had the hunters and a couple of locks helping out as well. Did the assist train on the bronze side.

While this has moved from the topic of buffs, to helping new guilds succeed in phase one, I'll share a tactic we've been using since our initial kill that helped to optimize our assisting/focus firing.

The technique seeks to solve the problem of frictional losses after the MA's target dies. Now, a good MA will always be looking for a good new target to switch quickly, but for casters especially, it helps to know the next target a few seconds before the last dies. This is useful if a caster doesn't think he will have time for a new spell to cast and land before the current target dies, and he would rather start casting on the next target. Again, most MA's will switch targets before it actually dies, etc, etc, but anyways, here's a better solution:

You assign an additional player to be the "Target Picker (TP)" for the MA, and you make the TP a MT-target so everyone can see what he's targeting. The MA will assist the TP whenever his target dies. Once the picker sees that the MA has grabbed his target, he can start looking for a new one. So, at any point, people are assisting the MA as usual, but if a caster thinks he would rather start casting a spell at the next target, he knows exactly where the MA is going next. It also assures that the targets are always killed in the best order, since its the full-time job of the Target Picker to locate the best target. We use a rogue as MA and a shaman as TP.

As your DPS increases and you get more comfortable with the encounter to stay ahead of the spawns, the value of this technique decreases, but when you are still learning and may often have 3,4,5 or more spawns on a side at times, I believe using this MA/TP plan helps a lot.

The short answer (for this case) is : its who the DPS assist. The MA becomes more of the "target holder" in this relationship, and relinquishes his usual target picking duties to someone else. But it still the guy who the DPS assist 90% of the time.



The reason we went with this is makes it easier to be a "perfect" MA. Yes, one person can do these two jobs themselves (as in the case with other fights that need use a MA), but with any task, there is room for error. Even a good MA can switch too slowly or too fast or pick a non-optimal next target. The double system minimizes that error, and allows people to see queued targets.

You have to remember that this system performs the best when there are 3-4 (or more, uh oh) drakonids out at once, like when people are still perfecting phase one. If your ahead of the spawns the whole time or have one or two spawned at once, then the added complexity of a MA/TP system isn't needed. But, when there are a lot of targets out, the biggest advantage is it lets the TP really make the best decision about what to attack because he can change targets, check for CC or special debuffs, assist the mob to see if its untanked. If an MA is holding a DPS target, he just can't do this sort of stuff (without special mods), and there is a chance he won't make the optimal choice. The TP can focus all his energy on picking the best target. Seeing the upcoming target helps a lot too I think, especially for casters and for healers that know they can toss a nuke in the fray after their next heal lands.

Here's an example of the MA/TP in action.

MA : 100% Mob X
TP : No target
DPS starts on X

MA : 80% Mob X
TP : 100% Mob Y (Not a great target)
TP is looking for a target

MA : 50% Mob X
TP : 100% Mob Z (Better target)
TP is looking for a target

MA : 30% Mob X
TP : 100% Mob Z
TP has finalized his target chocie

MA: 10% Mob X
TP : 90% Mob Z (going to be next)
People start switching, but can still see if the old thing is dead yet

MA : 0%
TP : 80% Mob Z
Mob X just died

MA : 70% Mob Z
TP : 70% Mob Z
MA has assisted the TP to hold the new target

MA : 50% Mob Z
TP : 90% Mob Y
TP sees the MA had his target, so he starts looking for the next one.



Maybe if your guild is using a more sophisticated single MA system that what I think of when I think "one MA", then this double system isn't a useful upgrade for you, but for our raid I think it helped. Gurg mentioned he is your MA for Phase 1, so I'm sure he does a dick nasty job. But for the rest of us, you never know when your MA is trying to simultaneously watch football, break up with his girlfriend, chat it up on AIM with his new future girlfriend, and picking targets for you during Phase 1. In this case, the more weight you can take off his shoulders, the better.

If your MA is that distracted or not that good at his job, I think the more valid solution is to get a new MA rather than assign a TP. One of the better ways to do it is to have an assist call. The MA calls assist on a mob. People go buck nutty on it. When the mob's at around 20%, he finds for another target, and when the first mob is dead and he's got a good target, he calls assist again.

From a dps perspective it's:

get assist call, which is your cue to
Kill MA's mob.
rinse and repeat.

All of this is of course until you're comfortable enough to handle it without raid chat cluttering assist calls all over the place.

On Fankriss, I don't so much act as an MA so much as I just hit my "We got motha fucking snakes!" button, clueing the rest of the raid as to stop dps'ing the boss and kill the snake.