Hey guys,

Am posting here to try to gain some specific pointers for handling neffie, especialy in regards to phase one. I know that there are bunch of guides and ideas out therebut they often leave me with questions!

To give some background we are reasonably comfortable with BWL, Vael can still be a major pain but we would expect to one or two shot chrommagus for example (I guess differing things are hard for different folks, everyone seemed 'afraid' of chroamgus but once you have basic tacttics down people just need to be disciplined!).

Anyway back on topic and our issues on phase one, assuming a doorway based meathod (i've avoided the AoE everything at the throne tactic as it cant work for every combination - good or bad call?) and the positiotning of a AoE and a DPS group at each doorway and hunters to pick up Chromatics.

That gave us I think (as of last night) 6 mages and 5 warlocks to AoE, 3 hunters and druid to pick up chromatics, 3 warriors on each doorway and 3 rogues on the DPS side.

Our issues are around keeping the Dragonkin in the doorway. On the AoE side we have tanks sundering everything in sight and demo shouting, On the Dps side we have a warrior with improved battleshout with 4 DPS in his group.

We invariably lose the AoE side first (red as of last night and tonight) and they cross towards the battleshouting warrior, and at that point overun the other doorway group.

I am led to believe that the mechanics of battleshout and aggro generation are such that if we had somone battleshouting in a group both sides they would still cross over towards the improved 'battleshouter' ? With that being the case there is some reluctance to have two groups battleshouting.

I should add that we are using frost traps in both doorways at the start of the fight, and that our AoE'rs setting up a rotation of Blizzard and (insert name of spell with slowing effect here).

So:

Can anyone point me to a link for the mechanics of battleshout threat generation ? (Especially how that would work with two differnt groups doing it in two locations).

Can anyone advise on how we can help out the AoE'rs by keeping thier drakonoids in place ?

After 6 tries last night best count was 8 on the AoE side and 12 on the DPS side, Chromatics are not an issue as long as we have a druid to hang on to them. We are keeping everyone up - our issues start as soon as they 'break free' of each doorway.

Thanks in advance for any idea!

Thanks Khysti,

So you are sugegsting to split the raid evenly by class (i.e. half the rogues\locks\mages etc) on each side ? I assume the concern is over making them die fast therefore we assume that they all dies before Aggro for a mage is an issue ?

I *believe* we tried this on a earlier attempt and the mages felt that they could not keep up with the damage\mana use, Nolari are you lurking here ? In our set of attempts tonight we have red\black again - is this tactoc valid irrespective of colours ?

Many Thanks!

It's easier to know the colors in advance to enable maximized dps. You don't want your warlocks fighting black draconids for example.

We use the Doorway method as well, so I will try to give our group setups and rolls for p1.

We divide the raid in 2 equal groups, each with:
1 warrior in tank gear (MT and OT in p2)
2 warriors in dps gear
2-3 rogues
2-3 hunters
Equal amount of healers
Our mages and warlocks start in the middle and move to a side depending on the colors. Red drakonids are for mages, locks go to the other side then.

The tank warriors catch the new mobs with a couple of sunders as they spawn. The others go crazy on AoE.
One hunter on each side gets to mark a Draconid. All hunters and rogues focus DPS on that one.
Mages and locks AoE the doorways.
If a mob escapes a hunter or rogue can bring it back to the AoE spot.

The hardest part is catching the new spawns, but your tanks should get the hang of it after a couple of tries.

We also split up our raid into 2 even halves.
We focus two targets, one melee and one ranged. Chromatics have first priority for the melees, whereas the ranged proceed with the normal ones.
As for the colors, you sometimes have to swap people. Red dragons require more heal, blue are immune to frost, so swap warlocks and frostmages, etc.
Also for the learing phase we threw in all possible buffs for that encounter. Of course only when we were able to almost beat the encounter.

At least that was our tactic when in the beginning. Meanwhile it's more like "pick target and damage go", but that's due to upgraded gear.

***edit
One more thing. We have at least one mage standing on the side of the doorway so that he can frostnova a dragonkin that doesn't want to be tanked and aggros somebody on the other side.
Happens sometimes, and I have not yet seen any way to stop them from doing so.

split into 2 even groups and sit at throne/door side, have goood communication, or organization between your casters (warlocks, frost mages, fire mages) so when they spawn you can adapt if needed.
if you run a fire heavy raid or something, just send a rogue or 2 onto the side that needs help if required

Untill you have him on farm status guilds often 'false start' him. Meaning one person will stay naked and activate the event while everyone else is logged out. This allows you to see the colors ahead of time and set up accordingly.

As a horde guild,we dropped AoE pretty fast,assist training the sides is faster,more efficient and just plain easier. Divide the raid in two,stacking the sides depending on the colors ( Ice mages on black,warlocks on anything but black etc). Have two tanks (your MT and OT) on each side in their tanking gear tanking chromatics. The rest of your warriors stay in the door way and spam shouts,cleaves and kill drakanoids and chromatics. They stay in the doorway and keep the draks there,if one gets loose have an assigned beforehand hunter drag them back make sure they dont go IN the door way or you risk running one getting stuck in evade. Assist off the rogues as the warriors will be switching targets to keep draks in the doorway. Designate a rogue to assist off of for each side,and a backup rogue in case of badluck. Also designate a hunter for each side to pull in strays.

Fast and furious dps is the key,no matter the color if you keep up with the spawns and they stay in the doorway its impossible to be overwhelmed. If your warriors start running about trying to catch draks or you simply dont have the dps you will wipe. Encourage dps pot use untill you have the fight down and to flask the MT. If your having trouble with red/black combos dont be afraid for your melee to pop FR pots untill the fights down.

Thanks again guys,

Fast and insightfull answers! The general consensus seems to be to drop AoE andn just DPs, so thats what I will be trying tonight!

@Vytea: We have never yet used a flask (including on brrodlord where we were told we *had* to) - are you saying it will make that big a difference in Phase2 & 3 ?
@Spoon: Thanks for the tip with frostnova, sure we will use this!
@Scnappi: Thanks for the group breakdown, we will be using this but experimenting with mages and locks doing direct vs AoE damage

So as a seperate aside even though battleshout taunting may not be needed can someone explain to me th mechanics of its aggro generation ? I can't seem to find a detailed analysis (yes ive used search!)

Thanks again

I wouldn't discount AoE completely. My guild uses 1 door aoe and 1 door single target, but on the single target side we typically have 1-3 warlocks also using rain of fire when the mobs build up a bit, and those warlocks invariably lead the damage dealt on that side. I would tend to agree that just assist training on both sides would be easier, but I think that having a few people laying down ranged aoe's to soften the mobs up can be a big help (not sure how much rain of fire ticks for, but lets say it's 150, and there's 4 mobs, that's a good 600 dps ;) )

edit: in regards to flasks, during a phase 2 warrior call, shadow flames on your MT can hit in the high 6000's, and his melee will hit over 1500 (so crushing well over 2k). It's quite likely to take a spike of 9k+ damage during a warrior call.

My guild got its first kill with assist 1 side, aoe other side. Our second kill we moved to an AoE under the throne strat, and have done that since. For us, it works much cleaner and it barely matters what colors we get. It does require 1-2 mages with imp blizzard though.

It works for us even in a red/black combo.. but we've always been magic heavy.

We still use 1 AE side and 1 Physical-DPS side... And we still use hunters to start the encounter and check colors... I guess since we're up to C'Thun and doing naxx we would manage just splitting the raid 50/50 and go, but this is the way we've done it from the start.

We often have 3-4 warriors on each side (yes, warrior heavy guild) so holding the mobs is most of the time not a problem... With 3 tanks 1 of them is assigned to Chromatics... The other 2 take turns in taking the dragonkin coming out... With 2 tanks doing them you can taunt, sunder and revenge like 6-7 secs and then go to doorway and wait for the next one, and the previous mob will keep hitting my back until it dies more or less.

Tho i think we'll just try splitting raid next time and adjust some minor things according to which color comes out.