My guild is currently working on Nefarian and having trouble with our strategy. We're currently using the "split sides" strategy, on which we assist train one side and AoE the other, with healers spread between the two sides, as well as tanks. This week's mix-up: Blue left, Black Right. We're assist-training the blue side while AoE-ing the Black side. Our strategy also involves burning down Colored drakonid before the Chromatics/

Here's our issue: Healing Aggro on the drakonids between the two sides. As soon as a Blue Drakonid comes out of the door, it makes a bee-line to one of two healers over on the Black side of the room, one of whom is a resto-specced druid (ie. has threat reduction talents), and the other of whom is a shaman. Both healers had the Tranquil Air totem down in their groups. The issue wasn't merely the healing aggro, but the huge amount of healing aggro that they received. A fellow rogue commented that he hit one with two backstabs, and it kept on trekking STRAIGHT toward the healer in question.

Our raid was stacked a bit inefficiently last night, with only one druid, 4 priests, and 5 shaman, which may have lead to each healer having to over-aggro to keep everyone alive, but as far as DPS goes, between 8 rogues (too many, I know, but it's what we had), we had little trouble keeping the blues down, when they stayed where we wanted them. As Main Assist last night, however, it was much more difficult to grab a drakonid and get my fellow rogues to burn it down when it wasn't staying where it needed to be.

I was wondering if anyone could spare some advice on how to avoid and/or rectify this situation a bit, other than bringing in more healers to split the healing aggro among a greater number of healers (which is going to happen one way or another)?

Thanks in advance.

How many warriors did you have per side to control the drakonids to begin with?

7 Total Warriors. 3 on the Assist side, 4 on the AoE side.

Black Drakonids or Red?
You said Black Drakonids and then said Red Side.

Blue/Black. Didn't notice that I'd said Red at first. Edited.

What do you usually do to bring loose mobs back to the warriors?

We have the entire raid sit between the two pillars (save for warriors and melee), so that regardless of what healer the drakonid goes for, it goes the same direction. A couple of bear druids, one watching each door, are tasked with grabbing loose drakonids and pulling them back to the tanks at the doorways. They have a snap aggro, and can stand a few hits. Just make sure your warriors aren't trying to chase down loose drakonids or it will go to hell real quick. They are your stoneclaw totems (lol). Just make sure the druid doesn't do too much aggro or they won't be able to shake the mob onto the warriors. The goal is to just snag 'em and get back to their watch position by the healers as quick as possible.

Yeah, our warriors and rogues were trying to chase down loose ones because of the loud complaints from the squishy mages that they were getting raped by loose Blues.

Unfortunately, because of our lack of healing overall last night, we really couldn't afford to put out one druid in bear form, but, generally, we'll have about 4-5 druids on for a given night, so we'll probably be able to pull it off.

Thanks for the advice so far, and any more advice would definitely be appreciated.

I wonder how many guilds use the same sides/middle strat that we do.

For our last attempt, we tried Sides/Middle, but at that point we were a bit short-handed and our class imbalance had gotten worse. It seemed to make the drakonids a little more controllable, but not enough to lead to a successful phase 1.

Any thoughts from an healers perspective?

From a healer's point of view (Priest), it really sounds like your warriors aren't picking up everything. With that much of a stacked raid, they should be able to hold most of everything. Although I would extol the virtues of Limited Invulnerability Potions to your squishy classes, I've found them to be great for Phase 1, giving me time for Fade to cool down if I have to bail some mage's ass out of the fire.

Iam a shaman from a horde guild, we use the AE/Assist strat but we dont put all our healers in the middle...

We use hunters and druids to help bring back stray targets, healing aggro on phase 1 from drakonids really shouldnt be an issue, even with black on one side.

I do however have problems getting nef off me during phase 1... even with 50+% dmg reduction, he still meleed me for over 1k a hit (dont know why he stopped nuking me)


anyway, back on topic, warriors are dropping the ball

drakonids are affected by scattershot. any time one gets out, it gets a blast to the noggin and then gets assisted down fast.

I've always treated Nef's Shadowbolting as random. Is that not the case?

We used to have a similar problem to this. As a prot spec'd warrior I would be standing near the doorway, a drakonid would come out, I'd dump 80 rage into him within seconds of his spawning with a shield slam/revenge/heroic strike/sunder armor macro and he'd continue beelining for a healer on the opposite side (was always one of a select few healers, always the same people based on what I saw on my targetoftarget mod). I've yet to see an explaination why this happened. It only happened on some attempts and seemed to be hit-and miss as to whether it occured. The only thing that would stop one of these mobs was a taunt to force aggro.

The only thing I can really think of to fix this is to just overwhelm them with dps and use scattershot/stuns/taunt to stop the ones that are hellbent on running to the other side. Either that or figure out what those specific people are doing that is causing the mobs to behave like that - I never figured it out, would be interested to see other people having this problem still (this was mid december '05 for me) and possibly an explaination for the behavior.

his behavior has always seemed aggro-based to me. he's always on our healers.

Having thought about it a bit, I suppose you're probably right. After my old guild got Nef on farm, the only people we'd lose in Phase 1 would be the occasional healer. The MCs and fears definitely seem random, though, and I think that's clouded my parsing of how he targets people for Shadowbolts.

MC seems to be entirely proximity based. if i feel like having nef use my abilities in the least coherent and/or dangerous way possible, i run up and give him a hug. inevitably, my guild mates feel the wrath of rapid fire/VOLLEY

This is not precisely true -- the hate generation isn't cumulative, but it does begin a fair bit before the drakonid walks out of the tunnel. They're put onto everyone's combat list several seconds before they start moving. And yes, you can use this to make sure that untanked drakonids go to where you want them to go.

the 'hate buildup' of the drakonids in the tunnel makes for some amusing interactions with lag, like a small spike sending a half dozen of them barreling for your healers at once when a second ago it looked like everything on that side was dead :)

Do you mean like have a priest or shaman or druid heal like mad and get on top of agro list and run to the melee side? rinse repeat?

p.s: oh god I feel like a n00b for asking this :(

I had assumed that was the case, and the times we had those problems were early learning attempts with lots of healing going on. It always just seemed kind of broken to me to function that way.