You're welcome.

I am not 100% sure, but I believe BS aggro works like healing aggro; the more mobs, the less aggro. Also make sure to have everyone in range for the buff or it wont work.

Heal aggro = (Amount healed * 0,5) / (number of mobs)
BS would then = (BS aggro * people affected) / (number of mobs)

Check Kelco's lists for exact numbers on BS aggro ;)

The way my guild handles Nefarian phase 1 is we start in two seperate grops after we know what the colors are. The groups are based on what the resistance the color on each side has. So if we have 5 frost mages, theyre not going to be with the color that resists frost. The warriors stand by the doorway and pick up the dragonkin as they spawn. Hunters pick off the ones that get loose and start running around, possibly going to the other side. Mages do direct damage at first and continue doing it unless there are a significant number of spawns up, then they start blizzard. Atleast one mage must have imp blizzard. They also do a frost nova rotation. Generally i cone of cold then lay frost nova and continue to blizzard from a distance and then the next mage does the same. This helps keep the mobs in a tight group so they dont get loose or spread out too much. There is usually a hunter or mage assist on that side aswell. Meele are sometimes in FR gear depending on the color theyre assigned to. Other than that, have a tank ready to pick up Nef when he lands and healers assigned to heal him. The zerg comes at 20% and mages/hunters should be enough to take them down.

Phase 1:

Assist train both sides, have your two best rogues be on each side designated as MA's. Have your warlocks and shadowpriests (if any) be ready to move to the other side if their side turns out to be black. For Chromatics, have a warrior drag it off to the side, and have a hunter DPS it down.

By assist training, you need very little healing, which means your healers should be doing a fair amount of DPS as well, which makes it go even faster. We got to the point where we actually have to wait for drakonids to spawn. Go all out in phase 1, because you have plenty of time to regen in phase 2. It's not a very intensive fight for healing at all outside of the warrior class call.

Someone (Gurgthock?) once posted the hp of the drakonids and the amount of time you have to kill each one, and the conclusion was that it's really quite a low level of DPS needed to keep up.

we always used hunters to mark them (except chromatic) in order they spawned, so there was no real 'buildup', and whenever chromatic spawned out rogues went and ate them while casters focused on the normal ones :)

We did the split into 2 groups, figure out the colors, AOE one side, focus fire the other thing for a very long time. It works okay, but sometimes you'll wipe as you adjust to have enough DPS to handle the incoming zerg of draks. Also, it makes phase 3 messy since you have 2 different groups of skeletons zerging at you, and if you're not careful a lot of them can get loose.

Recently we switched to the battle shout strategy. Everyone sets up on one side. The warrior in the guild with the best battleshout (ideally Imp BS, AQ rank, 3-piece wrath, etc.) is in a melee group. He stands a little in back of the door. He pops bloodrage and a rage pot and begins spamming battleshout as fast as he can. Almost all of the drakonids will just lock right onto him. (Battleshout generates 50 aggro per person bufed on every target in range, I believe.) Once a few drakonids get in range, mages and warlocks begin blizzard/rain of fire centerred on the Battle Shouting tank. (No one else should battle shout at all during the fight, by the way.) The other tanks grab any draks that run loose, especially chromatics. Melee should be burning down the chromatics as they'll resist most of the AOE damage.

This sounds crazy, I know, and your guild will probably be skeptical. If the battle shouting warrior does his job right, however, the draks will be practically glued to him. Keep the AOE, and nef will land in relatively short order. Your MT (who should NOT be the battleshouter for any reason) goes to pick up nef, and some other warrior should blow challenging shout to pull the draks to him. Clean them up, and go do phase 2.

This also nicely simplifies phase 3, since you've got just 1 pile of skeletons. A couple OTs can blow challenging shout once the zerg pops up. Mages pop limited invlun pots, and aoe the snot out of the skeletons. This nicely simplifies phase 3.

Since we've started using this strat we don't bother checking Nef colors. We get into his room, wait for bronze affliction from Chromag to wear off, then slay the dragon. Easy as pie.

Yeah, I've pushed through Nef on two guilds now with one using split raid (AE one side, FF the other typically) and with the second just battleshout-aggroing everything to the middle and AEing it down. The second option is a little more color-sensitive perhaps but it sure is pretty easy. Either method is, of course, pretty damn simple once you get used to it.

Call me biased, but I've found that most alliance guilds seem to go with AOE + FF, while most horde guilds seem to try FFx2. The aggro reduction and increased mana from blessings seem to help a little more- though I'm sure Tide and Tranquil could compensate. It's also worth noting that at least one horde guild on my server who recently killed nef use the BS strat.

I like FF because it feels more consistant, and aggro's just a nonissue. By the time aggro is gained by a mage that mob is almost dead anyway, and onto the next. They don't hit that hard, and if the assist train is working right they rarely make it a step or two, let alone far enough to endanger. One issue with this strat is hunters tend to feel a little useless, as Multishot draws too much aggro and the mobs often dont' survive long enough for aimed.

Many many others swear by AoE, but after our first kill used it, we tried FF and have never swapped back since.

Here's what we do:

Left side is single-target dps, following the MA. 2 warriors, consisting of the MT who is taunting/sundering, and a dps warrior who is ww/cleaving. Rogues, hunters, and a few healers over here too

Right side is AoE side. 3 warriors over here, 1 in tank gear taunting and sundering, me in full ww/cleave mode, and another warrior that does anything he can to keep draks in the door. Mages, locks, and more healers on this side. It's also helpful to have a hunter on this side for the frost trap, but you can't really count on it past the first one due to FD having such a high chance of being resisted with so many mobs around.

If we have leakage, our druids are pretty good at switching to bear and charging, but that has become less necessary since we got better at it.

The AoE side usually has more issues with controlling the draks, for obvious reasons, but I find that if I throw up a battleshout as each new drak comes out the door, it's usually enough to at least keep them on the right side. Depending on colors, we often find it helpful for a couple healers from the assist side to run over to the Aoe side with about 30 draks dead, since the assist side tends to be ahead on draks.

The pdm nef mod is helpful to know how far along you are, and I have found it to be extremely accurate with only one reporter on each side.



If there's one piece of advice I can give you, it's this: Organize a guild "war effort" where everyone supplies 2 flasks, or the materials thereof, and plan an entire 4 or so hour raid dedicated to killing Nefarian. Not only is it good for guild unity and discovering slackers, but I find that once you do something correctly, it simply becomes easier. Once we did our fully-flasked raid, flasks became unnecessary on the next kill for most classes, and unnecessary for everyone other than the MT, who still uses one, on the kill after that. (Actually I still use one because I tend to be 2nd tank in mostly dps gear, and if I put on more stam gear I don't do enough dps to stay 2nd, and everyone is just used to me being 2nd at this point).

Short of that, at least have all warriors, rogues, and dps casters use flasks to start, as healers and hunters don't actually get a ton of use from flasks on this fight. I still liked having them do it anyway for the solidarity aspect of it, but ymmv.

It's not aggro reduction, it's Concentration Aura.

Battle shout generates 55 rage per person it buffs split between the mobs that have you on their threat list. When there are more than about six mobs, Battle shout spam loses out to Demo Shout spamming (flat 43 threat per mob) when you're trying to herd mobs to AE. Check Klecko's thread in RnD for further clarification.

This may be true, however, Battle Shout does a much better job drawing the initial aggro and is more than adequate for using the entire fight if you are any good at the strategy. What might be worth doing is having one warrior spamming battle shout and a second spamming demo shout... There's probably some room for interesting min/maxing there.

Don't take this the wrong way, but this has to be the biggest waste of flasks I've ever heard. There is no reason for anyone need to a flask in phase 1. In phase 2 your MT is going to take about 90% of all damage done, and he should be flasked. In phase 3, your mages should have limited invulnerability potions to deal with the zerg. if they have those, and maybe a healer or two minding them, then you should kill Nef with ease. I can't think of a single time in the fight, even when we were learning it, where I though "Damn, I wish I had more health". More mana, maybe, but some mana pots clear that up handily.

The hardest part of this fight is learning to do phase 1 cleanly. After that phase 2 is relatively easy and phase 3 is basically a joke. Also, if I had to recommend a strat to a new guild doing Nefarian, it would definitely be the battle shout strategy. (I recommend the raid leaders find a video of this strategy before trying it, but I don't have a link to a good one.) While it sounds strange, it's very repeatable, it doesn't involve worrying about drakonid colors, and it simplifies your phase 3.

I think you missed the point. If everyone flasks, the first kill is pretty easy. After that, you don't need flasks anymore. I'm not saying flasking is ever necessary, but if you want something dead asap, flasking tends to be a big help. I don't even know what class you are, but since you have a mana bar you probably wouldn't want a titans. Either way, I wouldn't call a first nef kill a "waste of flasks."

Hellfire tank groups are very effective for my guild. The tank group consists of 3 Warlocks, 1 Paladin, and a Priest. We stand near a doorway, position for a good aoe coverage area, and spam Hellfire. Drakonids don't get past the doorway. Ironically the Warlock side is pretty easy to heal with only 3 targets that really take any damage, and the only other class assisting on damage is the Mages.

My guild is fairly heavy on Warlocks. Hellfire tanking is best for black drakonids in a black/red combination. Red tend to resist Hellfire to 25% normal damage, while black only seem to resist it to about 50% normal damage.

Our one oddball Warlock who doesn't have Intensity stands back and tags all the black drakonids with curse of elements. After coe, hellfire works about as effectively as it does for green, bronze, and blue.

Very interesting!

This is by far the best outlined Hellfire tank strategy I've yet seen, and for the first time I can see it repeatable and workable. I think we tried Hellfire exactly one time (our first 2 weeks were black/red) and said 'yeah, don't think so'.

Obviously this is very much a 'fit to guild' thing, from what I'd seen Hellfire tanks didn't 'feel' sustainable.

We always used Hellfire tanks when AOE'ing anything except red before we learned the battle shout strategy. It makes containment so much smoother than trying to do it without. One week we got the nasty red/blue combo, which isn't really amenable to hellfire tanking with mage AOE (we only had a couple warlocks on hand.) So we cooked up an Arcane Explosion tank. 1 mage wearing stamina gear, with imp buff, and the rest of the mages get TA totem (BoS if you're Alliance). It's important the mage tank doesn't have Arcane Subtlety, as well. (That'll basically ruin his ability to hold threat over the Blizzard AOE.) The mage tank spams rank 4 Arcane Explosion (down-rank is key to have sufficient mana). Everyone else Blizzards. It works pretty good, but the mage does need an innervate or two.

I don't know how people do AOE without some sort of tank, be it hellfire or battleshout. It was too hectic for us to control otherwise.

It is a "fit to faction" thing. The paladin is there for Concentration Aura. Aura + Intensity = 105% uninterruptable hellfire. I would even include a second Paladin at the expense of the priest for a FR aura.

Hey Guys,

After the great responce recieved I felt I ought to be writing back with an update!

We headed back last into BWL last night and concentrated on the focus fire tactic. The first try the ML targets were not being followed closely enough, the second saw us reach just part the halfway mark. We then adjusted hunters to follow the rogue MA (we had a Rogue and a Mage MA up) so the mage MA (and thus the casters) didnt pick up the chromatics and the rogues and hunters did. That took us 3/4 of the way through.

We then asked the DPS to use pots and made it to phase 2, but lost 8 or so in the transition. Next try it clicked - 40 people alive and Nefarian on the MT in the right posiiton - that took us to 19%, and a first look at phase3! - We also learned to keep a person to cleanse outside of fear range - a badly timed fear and a curse can be fatal!

With all said it donr I am comfortable that we can now keep at least 36 up and into phase two on demand, we would have pushed on to try to get our first Neff kill but the server decided it wasnt to be - server crash mid raid. /sigh.

However the help recieved here has had the desired effect - I fully expect to see a dead neff by the next reset - and as a raid leader it must be said its a fun fight trying to co-ordinate and remind all of the class calls doing it for the first time!

We just split the raid in the same manner as Onyxia (odd left, even right) and assist train them down. Mages / Warlocks move to the other side depending on Drak type and assist on whoever is the MA for their side. We rarely have more than 1 Drak up at a time and I doubt we use remotely as many resources as the aoe strats.

As for Phase 3, in a past guild we had a strat where we split AOE/Warriors up at the two doors but I much prefer letting all the skeletons just rush to the healers so you can mass aoe all of them right there. More concentrated damage in one spot means they all die faster anyhow.

We had absolutely terrible luck when learning Phase 1. We got red/black 4 weeks in a row and then we stumbled upon the battleshout AoE fest.
Our raids tend to be *cringe* warlock heavy. (5-9 warlocks) so we always have plenty AoE. We also adapted and have our MT and about 4 rogues pick a side a kill about 50%+ draks that come through. Normally we kill blacks with the rogues since they have such spiky damage and warlocks don't like them.

Gotta love The Venture Co, eh? :V:

We tried a throne AOE strat at first, but after getting blue three weeks in a row we decided to try something different, and switched to a split raid/single-target assist train strategy, which has worked out great for us (usually start out with a split of casters one side, melee/hunters the other, and adjust if necessary - having fire mages and warlocks on a black side doesn't work out so well...). It's one of those fights that once you cross a certain threshold of dps, it just becomes infinitely more stable and controllable. It just suddenly goes from drakonids leaking out left, right, and centre and murdering the raid, to things basically being killed as soon as they spawn, and never having more than two or three drakonids up at either side.

If you can reliably get most of the raid alive into phase 2, you're more or less there, and by the sounds of it, you probably would have got him last week, if the server wasn't such a laggy crashy piece of crap... The skelly zerg shouldn't take you more than an attempt or two to get the hang of, just make sure you time it to coincide with a nice class call, so stop dps as you approach 20%, and wait for a good call, then burn him down to trigger the zerg (as alliance, the pally call is probably your best bet, but rogue, hunter are both pretty damn easy too, and druid isn't too bad as long as the rest of your healers are on the ball, and you can afford to have one of your mages hang back near the tank to take care of curse removal).

Paladins don't have Prayer of Healing though, and self-inflicted Hellfire damage is not resistable. Prayer of Healing helps to keep the strat mana-efficient. Done properly, drakonids won't get many chances to even use their special abilities anyway. Though, I think that fact is more a matter of the strength of my guild's DPS than a strength of that particular strategy.