My guild made its first foray into BWL on Thursday last week. I wasn't sure what to expect: I was hoping to down Razorgore our first night; but an evening of wipes seemed more likely, and is indeed what ended up happening.
Our strategy, which was not significantly altered over the course of the evening, consisted of four Warrior-Priest pairs kiting the Legos and Dragons clockwise around the room in a large square. The remaining raiders were separated among the corners, nuking Mages as they emerged. Shamans were forbidden to use totems of any kind, which confused me some, since everything I'd read indicated Earthbind totems were the hot shit for this fight.
I believe we wiped 10 or 11 times (they all blurred together after awhile), getting to Phase 2 three times. Most frustratingly, we reduced the number of eggs to one on our final attempt of the evening, but poor execution of AoE CC allowed the trash to kill Razorgore, and he exploded while destroying the final egg... with 32 raiders up.
My critiques of our strategy and its initial implementation are as follows:
1. The strategy doesn't seem resistant to early setbacks, or allow for recovery; instead, it requires precise and exact execution by eight of the forty raiders. Someone having a bad day spread across 40 has much less impact than spread across 8.
2. The strategy doesn't seem to scale very well with gear. Warrior Tier2 itemisation (net changes of AC+619, Def+20 versus Might) seems to indicate that damage mitigation and threat generation won't change dramatically over the course of BWL, so this strategy will continue to rely on precise execution. This seems to waste that itemisation.
3. Massive waste of raid resources. Our raid attendance worked out such that each corner was outfitted with (among other things) two Rogues, a Hunter and a Mage. Even in the case of a two-Mage pop, corners were clear within 10 seconds, often much less. Due to Dragonkin or Legionnaire pops, we often stood around for 30 seconds or more doing nothing at all. It was more than a little frustrating to stand around, hoping for Mages to pop, so I didn't feel completely useless. And threat control by the kiters was precarious enough that Shamans would often draw aggro by throwing a heal on a passing Priest or Warrior.
Now, I don't pretend to fully understand every intricacy of this game, so I'm more than willing to consider that my observations are poor, or my critiques flawed. So I would appreciate any corrections or comments on those subjects; additionally, any suggestions on improving my observations would be appreciated.
Assuming I can proceed from these critiques, I can proceed to submit improvements:
1. Engage more raiders into the task of kiting. For example, dragons are easily (and commonly, in other strats) kiteable by Hunters, who have many more tools for: a) generating threat on-the-move; and b) avoiding the Dragons' train-like damage. Even with Warriors continuing to kite the Legionnaires, the removal of 12 Dragonkin from their kiting burden would reduce their incoming damage and thereby the healing burden on the Priests.
2. Corollarily, consider bringing Earthbind totems into the mix. The reason for banning totems was their generation of aggro would upset the Warriors' delicate aggro control. Are those concerns legitimate? How much aggro do Earthbind totems generate?
3. Abandon wholly the idea of kiting (aside from the Dragons), and butcher everything. One of my concerns in considering this route is I don't have a DPS benchmark for dropping the adds before the next spawns. My understanding is that 1-2 adds spawn from the cubbies, every 15 seconds. Up to 12 Dragonkin may be spawned at any time; thus, once 12 Dragonkin are out, only Legos and Mages may spawn. My only frame of reference on concentrated raid DPS is Rags, where we consistently drop him to 25-35% before first Sons.
My major concern with point #3 is that we've put a lot of effort (and gold, both in repairs, consumables and enchants) into the current strategy, and dropping it entirely for another strategy might be rough on everyone's morale. Assuming the best outcome of this thread (outlandish and obscene praise for my perceptiveness and strategic acuity ;) ), I'd likely hold onto it against a couple more nights of fruitless wiping. I gather that reaching Phase 2 four times on our first night in BWL is a modest success, and perhaps success will be forthcoming tonight.
Anywho... I've flapped my gums enough. I'd appreciate your thoughts, comments and criticisms, and I hope you don't mind me exploiting this great forum. :ninja:
You have the DPS to do this if you're getting Rag that low.
Ok, then have druids sleep dragonkin, the controller sleep a couple, and warriors kite the rest. Divide the rest of your raid into four equal groups, one in each corner, each with its own MA, and kill every humanoid that comes out. Profit.
Dragons can be feared, slept, and/or kited. Piercing Howl is a big help for the kiting (we used a kite legos w/ frost shock/earthbind strat in Disrupted for Razorgore kills, but Kill Orcs strategy can definitely work with enough gear to kill Rag).
Jesus don't want me in a sunbeam
Sunbeams are always made on me
Don't expect me to cry, for all the reasons I'm gonna die
Don't ever ask your kick of me.
We used lego kiting for a long time. The problem is just what the OP said -- little margin for error. We either made it to Razorgore with 40 standing or a kiter died and then an uncontrollable mass of 8 legos would destroy one healer after another. That's dumb. Kite if your raid is so undergeared that they can't DPS anything more than mages. Otherwise, killing is far, far superior, and is also good practice for Nef when you get there.
We used lego kiting for a long time. The problem is just what the OP said -- little margin for error. We either made it to Razorgore with 40 standing or a kiter died and then an uncontrollable mass of 8 legos would destroy one healer after another. That's dumb. Kite if your raid is so undergeared that they can't DPS anything more than mages. Otherwise, killing is far, far superior, and is also good practice for Nef when you get there.
If you're willing to path-bug the Legos, you can buy a lot of extra margin by smart ramp/jumping. Also, Earthbind and Piercing Howl buy a lot of extra time.
Jesus don't want me in a sunbeam
Sunbeams are always made on me
Don't expect me to cry, for all the reasons I'm gonna die
Don't ever ask your kick of me.
If you can get rag to 25% presons you absolutely have enough dps to kill everything that spawns except for the dragons which should be kited by hunters and sleept by druids.
We found that with sufficient dps killing is much, much more forgiving than kiting because of the simple reason that you can heal so much more.
We had to abandon our strategy which was fairly similar to what you were doing in favor of doing what Gurg suggested (only with hunters kiting non-slept dragonkin) and it worked out amazingly well. Plus, the "kill every f'n humanoid" strategy just gets easier as your guild obtains better gear.
Continue with DPSing in the corners but if you can DPS rag down to the 25% mark before sons you should be able to kill all humanoids in the corners. When we started to first implement the dps corners(kiting was impossible for us) we had 12 melee in the raid. 3 per corner. 1 warlock per corner and a shaman. Had druids sleeping a dragon apiece and hunters kiting. It is pretty straight forward. Legionaires die nearly as fast as mages if you have enough dps.
there's nothing wrong with earthbind totems in terms of agro/etc that I'm aware of. We've used EB's in the 4 corners of that small 4x4 grid in the middle since we started and it works on the legionnares. We kite dragons via hunter, though small amounts of human error cna lead to bad things. The orcs are completely cc'able that I'm aware of so even small things like gouge/stuns that you might have to use for brief moments are possible.
Assign a healer to the OT for conflag. Early on, that was a major issue with us, no one healing the conflag target and only the MT.
Once your controller gets a bit more familiar with controlling Razorgore you can sleep a great deal of the dragonkin.
If your timing is perfect, you can get two sleep spells cast while the Destroy Egg ability is on cooldown. I usually pretarget a moving dragon during the casting of Destroy Egg and immediate cast sleep when the cast is over.
Optimally you can sleep 6 dragonkin at a time, but even 4-5 is very attainble without losing any time between egg breaks.
You have the DPS to do this if you're getting Rag that low.
Ok, then have druids sleep dragonkin, the controller sleep a couple, and warriors kite the rest. Divide the rest of your raid into four equal groups, one in each corner, each with its own MA, and kill every humanoid that comes out. Profit.
That's really about it.
We've been using this strat for a year now. As he said, if you can get Rag to 25% before sons, you have the DPS. I distinctly remember my guild's benchmark at that point when we first killed Razorgore. I recommend setting up a rogue assist in each corner and butchering whatever orcs spawn as quickly as possible. A good orb controller should be able to sleep 2 dragons before breaking an egg. With 5 druids, you rarely have more than 3 dragons running around. You can just ping-pong them with hunters, or have a warrior pick them up in a pinch.
We used lego kiting for a long time. The problem is just what the OP said -- little margin for error. We either made it to Razorgore with 40 standing or a kiter died and then an uncontrollable mass of 8 legos would destroy one healer after another. That's dumb. Kite if your raid is so undergeared that they can't DPS anything more than mages. Otherwise, killing is far, far superior, and is also good practice for Nef when you get there.
This is the progression I've seen as well in several guilds.
Basically start out kiting if you don't have the DPS, but each successive clear of MC/BWL and such will net you more DPS (hopefully). Have your DPS research and min/max their gear and talents to help improve as well. Eventually you'll be able to kill all the humanoids and just kite the dragons.
Once you start doing the killing I'd suggest having druids sleep the first dragons out the doors, then hunters kiting in a figure 8 around the room, then warlocks fear kite as necessary. You should still be able to maintain enough DPS to take down the humanoids and you won't have dragons in your hair. From there it's just a 'how long can you last' scenario...
As a last effort too, you can have razergore aoe, and if you're doing the killing strat, he'll only really get the dragons on him which won't hurt him that much and that can save you a lot of pain if things are going sour.
I think this fight is all about finding what works for your group (there are several different strat's that can work for this fight obviously). We attempted this a few different ways until we found out what worked best for us (we ended up using our original strategy, but what we found out was by trying out other strategies, we became much more focused and worked together as a team in a more efficient manner - which is a big difference vs MC). As others have mentioned above, if you have the dps to Rag 25-35% pre son's, there is no reason that you can't be killing both the mages and the lego's. Mages can keep 1 lego in each corner sheeped at all times if necessary. If things get out of hand toward the end and it looks as if your going to lose a corner (typically with only a few eggs remaining), use Razor's AOE and then fear bomb to get into phase 2. I'm assuming your using a Warrior to control the orb do to the aggro he gains by doing so? How many people did you have alive when you made it to phase 2?
If things get out of hand toward the end and it looks as if your going to lose a corner (typically with only a few eggs remaining), use Razor's AOE and then fear bomb to get into phase 2.
The one time we were close to Phase 2, and things were looking a little shaky, we did try this, but the execution of the fear-bombing was... poor, and Razor got killed before the last egg. This tactic is definitely in our repertoire, we just need to work on the execution.
I'm assuming your using a Warrior to control the orb do to the aggro he gains by doing so?
Yes, except it seems there's a fatigue debuff that occurs after three MCs, so I was taking care of the final control, and Feigning on those occasions we got to Phase 2.
How many people did you have alive when you made it to phase 2?
Most times, it was fewer than 10. On the attempt where Razor died and exploded on the final egg, we had 32 up... :(
Unless we are missing something about the Controlling Orb (entirely possible), you need to use two controllers, because a controller gets a 30-second fatigue debuff that prevents using the Orb after three full controls. Our current strategy has one of our OTs do the first three controls, then a Hunter or Rogue for the last one (for Feign/Vanish). This is under the assumption that Razor threat built up during the first three controls will carry over to Phase 2, but that's not been demonstrable yet.
We've been (lotsa Razorgore kills - alliance side) always doing it with one paladin. Although I am by NO means convinced that that is the most efficient or time-effective way to do it.
Hmm....this post has brought up some good points, and some interesting things I'm going to bring up with my guild leader.
At the moment, the way we do Razorgore is to have all the mages killed, legos kited by warriors, and dragonkin kited by hunters. We have 2 groups assigned to each corner, and each kiter runs to the opposite corner of wherever they start - IE if you start in the East Corner, you run back and forth kiting between the East and West corners, going up the ramp, pause and wait for them to almost catch up, then jump down the center, rinse / repeat. We don't use Earthbind totems, tried it in the middle, didn't really like it, went back to kiting opposite corners.
Rogues, Mages, Locks all DPS down mages. Healers for DPS groups stay in their respective corners, kiting healers stand in the center so as not to lose range.
The main problem we tend to run into is if our hunters die, dragonkin get loose, kill a few healers, are picked up by warriors but because they are immune to PH, tend to catch up, daze the warriors, which then allows the legos to catch up...dead warrior. We're currently on Nefarian, have Chromag on farm, and usually 1-shot everything from Vael - Chromag (big doggie takes 2-3 tries though still), but for whatever reason it almost ALWAYS takes us 2, 3, 4, sometimes more tries to get Razorgore down.
Another slight problem we run into is the initial conflag from phase 2. We'll have a couple warriors rush in and fight for aggro, with one or two (if we have two extra left alive) standing by ready in case they both get conflagged. The problem comes when both our initial tanks get conflagged...our backup tank runs in, gets conflagged...and all 3 of them kill each other off, or two die, or while all 3 are conflagged, Razorgore is loose running around killing healers...conflags someone in the raid...I've seen many things go wrong at the start of phase 2, and I'd just like to get that transition down better.
Another slight problem we run into is the initial conflag from phase 2. We'll have a couple warriors rush in and fight for aggro, with one or two (if we have two extra left alive) standing by ready in case they both get conflagged. The problem comes when both our initial tanks get conflagged...our backup tank runs in, gets conflagged...and all 3 of them kill each other off, or two die, or while all 3 are conflagged, Razorgore is loose running around killing healers...conflags someone in the raid...I've seen many things go wrong at the start of phase 2, and I'd just like to get that transition down better.
If you are having trouble setting tanks for Phase 2, have one of your tanks at the final controller. I do it as a paladin, and I never lose aggro.
Conflagration is also directional (frontal) so the other tanks battling for aggro should be at his back. Also it helps to try to move him away from the other tank so he's got a bit of running distance once Conflagration wears off.
Oh yeah, forgot to say one other thing...we have only one person controlling Razorgore...our #1 hunter and guild leader. All warriors are kiting / DPSing until the end, at which time *sometimes* I've seen a tank at the orb waiting for Razorgore, don't think we've ever really established "Once phase 2 is imminent, ONE OF YOU TANKS GET TO THE ORB".
Sounds good on the spacing it out a bit more though.
07/31/06, 12:40 PM
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