I realize this bossfight is long ago for most of you, but I was wondering if you could supply your opinion.

My guild is just getting into BWL and we're downing Raz weekly, but we still wipe more than I'd like. I think part of the problem is we've been light on hunters and druids (3 of each last night). I am a hunter and feel I need to kite about 6-10 of these dragonkin, ideally.

Anyway, here's the main issue from my perspective: When I "tag" a slept dragonkin, it sometimes doesn't seem to aggro on me always. It's hard to say for sure, since I am jumpshooting them once I run past and don't look back, but I don't always get a CT_Raid aggro alert.

Question: What's the best way to pop sleep and kite the dragonkin for a hunter? I've been using arcane (max rank) or sometimes dist shot (max rank)...Should I instead use BOTH on a given target, for example, arcane then distract (or the other way around)? Or something else?

Well, we do that so the druids can then sleep a different one, especially since we have few druids there will be plenty of dragonkin running around--better if they're chasing me. It seems much easier to add a slept dragonkin to my kiting train, since I can just run past then jumpshoot it.

But if I'm screwing up, I'd be happy to hear further confirmations.

Also thx for the ct_raid warning comment, that slipped my mind, cheers.

Yah not to be harsh, but that's the silliest thing I've ever heard. If its already asleep why in the hell would you wake it up and then wait for another, different dragon, to sleep? Just let the druids pick one dragon each and keep THAT dragon slept the whole time.

Yeah, when I would bring my druid to this fight, nothing made me happier than to be able to kite one dragonkin to the middle of the room, sleep it and leave it there while I tended to healing my corner (targetting and re-sleeping it ever so often).

Unless they changed it recently (I've been on raiding hiatus for ~2 months) there's only, what 12 dragonkin at saturation? Even With just 3 druids and 3 hunters, the max any one hunter should need to kite would be ~4, depending on the corners the dragonkin spawn in and when, unless your druids and the other hunters were just flat out bad (or you were all trying to sleep/kite the same ones, which I suspect to be the case).

We have Warlocks mark a Dragonkin (using the raid icons) and they're responsible for keeping it chain Feared. Druids also keep one Dragonkin chain Hibernated. Between the 5+ Warlocks and 4+ Druids in our raids, we generally have most of the Dragonkin covered. We also have the mind controller sleep the Dragonkin as often as possible (you can sleep about two per egg break as the MCer).

Edit- We generally have our Hunters help focus fire down Mages / Legionnaires. They're especially handy when a Mage decides to sit on top of a platform or in the middle of the room and just cast Fireballs.

Edit 2- And if a Hunter does choose to kite, he first Hunter's Marks the target to give a clear visual indication to not re-sleep or re-fear that target. With the Warlocks and Druids having control of the raid target icons, Hunters can easily pick out which Dragonkin aren't currently being handled and nail them as they spawn.

Oh I read the whole response. ;) You really should not worry about how many dragons *you* have on you as long as they are *all* being handled. If one guy picks up more its usually just "right place at the right time" sort of thing as they were spawning.

And no, the easiest way for you to pick them up is to snag them as they spawn when all they have is proximity aggro on someone.

Thanks for the help.

Assuming I try and tag dragonkin as they spawn, would I be well-served to shoot them while they're in front of me with arcane shot (say), and then scatter shot them so that I can run past and continue my circuit (I've been running counterclockwise around the entire room).
Or does jumpshooting once I run past still make sense?

Sorry for all the nub questions. Like I said in the first post, we're already killing this guy but I'm trying improve/reduce some wipes.

I have noticed that sometimes the mobs seem to be scripted to run to the orb, regardless of what happens to them on the way. After they get there, then normal aggro comes into play.

I've successfully run this encounter a number of different ways. Paladins kiting using righteous fury + consecration to pick up adds. Wars using sunder/taunt + demo/PH to kite. I've had success both with the controller-fireball kite and without, using a massive single train or multiple small trains. On one occasion I've seen a successfull kill with a mage kiting the entire room using the controller-fireball approach.

From what I've seen the most reliable approach is multiple small trains using warriors. Don't bother with the controller fireball. When I've trained the room with a paladin, the paladin simply cannot get hit ever. If he gets hit he gets dazed and the train catches up and wtfpwns him. Training on my warrior, though, I get hit a lot - it's where I get my rage for demo shout. And I've never been dazed - I don't know if it's just because of better dodge or I'm just lucky, but it seems vastly more reliable. Almost as if bliz coded something of a warrior advantage here.

Anway, the approach I'd recommend as the easiest and most reliable is simply have wars run figure-eight's across the platform ramps and through the middle of the room picking up mobs by sundering them on the way past, and casting demo shout to keep aggro. I absolutely do pick up slept dragons with taunt/shield slam because it's much more reliable to have the dragon chasing me than have it pick up heal aggro and break a sleep early and cleave a healer.
If some of your wars run circles, some do figure-eights and some run counter-direction to the others, you can share piercing howl/demo shouts by casting them when your trains cross.

I haven't tried the hunter kite-dragonkin approach, or the kill all the humanoids approach, which seem to work well for some guilds. The wars kite everything is just really simple and reliable, and has a fair amount of room for error, which is why I like it.

Anyway, that's just my opinion.

For reference when we do Razorgore we typically have around 4 hunters, and 4 or 5 druids. Each hunter marks the first dragonkin out of their corner and kites it for the rest of the encounter. Afterwards each druid picks out a dragonkin, marks it with faerie fire, and then proceeds to keep it slept to the best of his/her ability. Once the hunters and druids are full, we typically have warriors picking up the remaining dragonkin and kiting them about as best they can, or possibly even just offtanking them or somesuch.

I'm not entirely sure about what warriors do as by that time I'm concentrating on keeping my dragonkin busy while dodging arcane explosions from the mages.

I'd say that kiting 6-10 of the things is a futile attempt on your part. There's too much chance for one screwup, and you only get one scatter shot every 30 seconds to save yourself. You can't feasibly keep aggro on that many mobs when there's a multitude of healing happening across the raid, AND stay ahead of them, AND still be expected to pick new ones up. If you can keep one dragonkin occupied you're helping, even if it doesn't seem like much. It allows people to focus on other things, namely mages and legionnaires. Don't try to save the raid by yourself, you can't. It's much simpler, and much more sustainable, to keep one occupied for the duration of the fight, than to have multiple ones preoccupied until you eventually get a split second of bad luck, get dazed by something or other, and end up getting killed by the 6 dragonkin you're kiting, then having all of them run around raping healers. The capability to effectively remove one of those things from the fight reliably is a much larger benefit than you seem to realize.

You're not superman! :(

The way we do it is assign 1 person to 1dragon, and stay on that one. It prevents people "fighting" for a dragon, usually resulting in other dragons not being CCed. We assign 1hunter per dragon, then 1druid or 1warlock to all the next that come out. If for some reason, that's not enough, we have people calling on vent wild dragons, and the MC sleep them. You can effictively keep 3 slept, however limiting that number works best, like 2. If for some reason, with all your hunters/lock/druid and the 2 by the mc, you still have dragons running around, another hunter can pick them up or let a warrior kite them. Also, good warlocks can easily fear 2 each, since fear makes the dragons run away, giving you time between each fear. Use random curses for each warlock to tell which dragon they have(weakness,cor,cos,coe), fearie fire for druids and hunter mark for hunters. Deciding the order on each corner helps too. Having the hunters do all the kiting is pointless imo, but quite doable. Just that if for some reason you get hit by a fireball or an arcane explosion, you'll probably die and all your dragons will have tons of prebuilt aggro on healers.

As for picking up slept dragon, I'd use distracting shot, then scatter if it's up to get past it. If not, you can make a 90° turn, cross the room in the middle, then turn again and follow the wall. With cheetah on, it buys you enough time to get distance on the dragon, then use stairs to make this distance safe. If the dragon is too close and scatter is up, the other way works too, scatter first then jump shoot distracting shot as you're running away. Oh and another way I've seen people use is shoot a serpent sting, after 2ticks or so the dragon will come for you usually, but by the time those 2ticks happen you're already far ^^