We've killed C'Thun twice now, and are still ironing out some details to make the fight consistent. A recurring issue is vuln timing--we tend to have a lot of confusion in the few seconds leading up to each vuln.

When do most people try to vuln? And what specific protocol do you use to communicate between stomach and topside?

As far as I can tell, the best time to vuln is immediately before a Small Eyes/Giant Eye spawn. The only thing alive should be a Giant Claw that you've had at least 15 or so seconds to DPS, even if you start the vuln a good 10 seconds early (just to be safe). However, this window only appears once per minute.

Which reminds me, we tend to waste 2-3 people (tank/healer or two) tanking a low-to-mid HP Giant Claw during vulns. Is this normal, or do people consistently manage to fire vulns when things are completely clear?

In general, how do you get the vuln to happen right as the topside team is ready? When someone in the stomach says that a vuln is imminent and asks me whether we want it, I try to give a time estimate. But when I say "now," it's often 5-10 seconds before anything happens. Sometimes a "5 sec to Eyes" warning pops after I say "now," and the vuln doesn't go off until right after the Eyes spawn, which is obviously bad. I'm wondering if people have specific patterns of communication they use to make sure that a vuln can be given without delay when the topside team is ready.

I noticed the same, so when the stomach team is ready to take it down, I tell them to do so 10 seconds before the next spawn, no later. If it's not vulnerable 5 seconds before the next spawn, and the stomach people are still 'working on it' I usually tell them to stop and not risk getting a new spawn right at vuln. Works out well usually.

Oh, and communication is done through voicecomms obviously.

like most fights, we just zerg the shit out of it, seems to work pretty well thusfar.

We just have vulns happen when they happen, if small eyes spawn just as it goes vuln thats only ~2 sec off of vuln dps giant eye would take ~5 sec away, and a claw would be OTd.

By simply not caring when a vuln comes we get 40-45% damage done in a vulnerability, with carefully timing it would probably let us get him in 2 vulnerabilities instead of 3, but we have never felt it neccesary to put in the 'effort' of trying to make the vulnerabilites happen at certain times.

It also seems to me that if you spend time waiting to kill the stomach tents at the 'right' time you loose just as much time overall as you would by maybe having to take an extra vulnerability due to having to deal with some spawns during a vuln.

We initially tried to time it but switched to pure greedy kill them quickly as possible.

Just get him immune as quickly as possible and you will never lose control. The fight is so nerfed now with the rezzing between phases that it hardly matters though.

usualy as a giant claw is at ~30% and dieing, or right as a giant eye spawned, kill the stuff up then kill cthun

We take him to vulnerability ASAP. We could probably reduce it to 2 vulnerabilities by dicking around with the claws inside the stomach, but the fight is usually so smooth we can spend the extra few minutes and not try anything too fancy.

You guys might want to put a little more effort into your posts. Just a heads up.

We kill the right Flesh Tentacle first, then get the second to between 1-5% and then wait for an Eye Tentacle spawn. Once the little eyes are dead and any remaining giant claw is being off-tanked, the raid leader gives the go ahead, the last tentacle is dropped, and everyone goes all out on C'thun.

Advanced warning for an incoming vulnerability allows warlocks to throw CoR/CoE/CoS, mages to get full fire vulnerability, druids to faerie fire, and warriors to fully sunder C'thun before the start of the 45 second window, which helps get the most out of the 45 seconds. Doing this, we normally kill him in 2 weaken cycles.

We never worry about the timing really. We may say hold up for small eye tents, but other than that, it isn't worth it to us. We commonly offtank a giant claw during the vuln phase and kill the giant eye if it spawns right before the vuln phase. The fight generally lasts only a few min longer anyways and is more controllable if you give yourself a break by vuln'ing him asap.

You get a nice 45(?) second break between the end of a vuln phase and the next wave of crap spawning. This is on top of the vulnerable time you can use to catch up. As such, we rush the vuln phase as quickly as possible. The damage that you lack during the vuln phase pales in comparison to the extra time you have to kill adds.