Crusader's Coliseum - Gladiatorial Combat Without the Annoyance of Arenas - Page 10

Miloh · 08/20/09, 10:59 AM

Seems like the Holy Priest can mostly be left alone. Renew/PW:S can be easily dispelled/purged, Flash Heal doesn't heal for all that much, and Greater Heal is easily interrupted.

The other three healers, however, appear to be able to burst some significant HPS. Having a Warlock to shutdown the Resto Druid is huge. And, as noted above, a Prot Warrior can keep the Shaman or Paladin locked out near indefinitely.

The NPCs feel as though they have a penchant for kiting--or perhaps it was just random pathing that continually brought our focus target over the Frost Trap. Regardless, keeping a snare on the focus target (I kept up hamstring) is helpful.

Demgar · 08/20/09, 11:37 AM

I think that what we are seeing is that the kill order is fairly irrelevant, so long as effective crowd control is organised and applied. Knocking off the healers first will speed up the fight somewhat, but with some more risk. Leaving the healers up will extend the fight somewhat, but the damage on the raid will dop off very quickly.

Originally Posted by ildon

Maybe I'm just expecting too much, but once we got our CC organized the fight was disappointingly easy, and the design of the fight "ending" with the first two kills and then just dragging on for 5 minutes (or whatever) after that just doesn't seem that fun.

I found our first kill rather exciting (17 mins!), but I think after a few weeks it will indeed start to drag a little. It's a bit strange to find out if you've won the fight or not in the first two or three minutes. After that, it takes several people screwing up pretty badly to jinx it. By the time you get to the last guy, the rush has worn off, and you are just glad that it's over.

We kept hoping that the druid would combat res one of his buddies and keep things interesting!

slant · 08/20/09, 12:48 PM

One alternative strategy for the 25 man faction champions encounter is to work around the AE damage reduction buff by leveraging multiple rogues with glyphed talented fan of knives dualwielding wound poison. The rogues are MVPs here. They do very high poison damage AEing, apply the mortal strike debuff, and constantly interrupt spells on all mobs. Unholy death knights spreading diseases and mages with living bomb are also valuable. No crowd control is used in this strategy at all and other classes simply single-target assist to burn down the marked target, who receives almost no healing and explodes quickly.

Kill order is tree (as it has instant-cast heals), priest (dispels), then the high damage melee DPS-- rogue, DK, and warrior. After that it's just cleanup. This strategy is both fast and effective if your raid contains at least two rogues and a DK or two, but it won't work in 3.2.2 when throwing specialization is nerfed.

Talanik · 08/20/09, 4:04 PM

Regarding the 50 attempts thing in heroic ToC - is your guild limited to 50 wipes for the entire instance, after which it becomes locked out? Or is that only pertaining to the achievement?

mek · 08/20/09, 6:40 PM

Originally Posted by Talanik

Regarding the 50 attempts thing in heroic ToC - is your guild limited to 50 wipes for the entire instance, after which it becomes locked out? Or is that only pertaining to the achievement?

That is correct - 50 wipes per instance ID. After the 50th wipe, the whole place despawns.

And if you get zero wipes, then you get mega phat lewtz. And it's not clear what influence 1-49 wipes will have on any extra loot at the end, if any.

gia · 08/20/09, 7:05 PM

The MMO-C loot list mentions 2 tribute chests:

World of Warcraft Database - Sigrie
World of Warcraft Database - Sigrie

One has ilvl 258 weapons and the other has the ilvl 272 cloaks. I would assume that one is awarded with the either the 25 or 45 wipes remaining achievement and the other is awarded with 45 or 50.

Maledict · 08/21/09, 5:17 AM

Erm, I would assume the 258 chest is awarded for the tribute run in 10 player mode. It fits perfectly with the way the tiers are split over ilevel.

10 player normal = w32
10 player hard / 25 player normal = 245
25 player hard / 10 player tribute = 258
25 player tribute = 272

Of course, this would again puts us in the position of having the best item available coming from the 10 player instance, and on top of that the best *weapons* available, which are the most important slot for any character. So maybe it's wrong - but it would certainly fit better than having 0 datamined loot for the 10 player tribute run, and two seperate chests for the 25 player.

• Chicken · 08/21/09, 6:16 AM

Originally Posted by Maledict

Erm, I would assume the 258 chest is awarded for the tribute run in 10 player mode. It fits perfectly with the way the tiers are split over ilevel.

10 player normal = w32
10 player hard / 25 player normal = 245
25 player hard / 10 player tribute = 258
25 player tribute = 272

Of course, this would again puts us in the position of having the best item available coming from the 10 player instance, and on top of that the best *weapons* available, which are the most important slot for any character. So maybe it's wrong - but it would certainly fit better than having 0 datamined loot for the 10 player tribute run, and two seperate chests for the 25 player.

Separate tribute chests were datamined for 10-man actually:

World of Warcraft Database - Sigrie
World of Warcraft Database - Sigrie

Valerys · 08/21/09, 6:21 AM

On 10-man, we tried CC at first but a few seconds into the fight our resto shaman raid leader said "fuck it, let's just kill them, here's a Bloodlust" and we basically zerged them down without any CC.

Later on the 25-man, we did use some CC and dispelling but it never felt like it was going to be difficult. A couple of clothies died to assist train but we basically zerged down their healers and then it was just mopping up.

I hope it's going to be harder on heroic.

Tinwhisker · 08/21/09, 7:32 AM

Just a guess, but I would imagine that at some increment in the number of attempts you have correspond to the number of crusader orbs you get as well. Since nearly none drop in normal mode (max 5 per week at 100%) and they aren't available for purchase there needs to be some way of distributing them to players and this seems like the most likely way to me.

♦ Tecton · 08/21/09, 7:41 AM

Originally Posted by Tinwhisker

Just a guess, but I would imagine that at some increment in the number of attempts you have correspond to the number of crusader orbs you get as well. Since nearly none drop in normal mode (max 5 per week at 100%) and they aren't available for purchase there needs to be some way of distributing them to players and this seems like the most likely way to me.

They'll be available for purchase as of 3.2.2.

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Crusader Orbs Available for Purchase in 3.2.2

Copernicus · 08/21/09, 2:16 PM

Originally Posted by chicken

Separate tribute chests were datamined for 10-man actually:

There are four 10-man tribute chests listed in the Armory. - Crusader's Coliseum - Gladiatorial Combat Without the Annoyance of Arenas

For non-link clickers, Crusader Orbs in the The World of Warcraft Armory lists four tribute chests at each difficulty level. Three chests for each difficulty level contain weapons and one chest for each difficulty level contains the cloak. Expect just gold/Orbs at 0-24, a weapon from 25-44, multiple weapons from 45-49, and the cloak at 50.

Tinwhisker · 08/21/09, 2:20 PM

Would it be safe to assume those rewards are additive? Meaning the final chest will have a cap, multiple weapons, orbs and gold. Or am I just being greedy here?

dustdog · 08/22/09, 4:13 AM

With a resto shaman and tree druid to deal with, and only one mage for cc who we stuck on the arms warrior and ret paladin, it felt best to eat the shaman first and drop his totems; which of course helped stopping ret/arms from being even more dangerous from the windfury he drops.

The warrior is beyond a pain, every time I bubbled, without fail it was immediately blown up from shattering throw(wasn't primary target ever, but had to be in range i guess); fortunately with the crazy agro mechanics, casting bubble itself is enough to drop debuffs/threat, even if you can't to full immediately. If possible, bubble away from them.

+cast time is king.

10man seems to be their way of slipping in the obscure weapons/gear (fast 1h dps sword etc).

vaestmanaeyjar · 08/22/09, 7:00 PM

One funny fact from the two tries it took us on third encounter in 25 man: both attempts saw both raid warlocks annihilated first. I suspect the NPCs don't like the banish+fear+seduce/felhound combo. I'll try dominating the fel hunter next time, must check on level restrictions though I doubt this one CC will work.
Best fun of the week was summoning an infernal myself during the Zaraxus fight and hear the puzzled voices on vent.