Last night my guild made our first attempts on Ragnaros, and unsurprisingly we had some trouble with the Sons. I'm curious how the initial aggro works on these, and what the ideal way to round them up is - apologies if this horse is already well-beaten.

Having looked at the Pacifist guide and some videos, I was expecting the Sons to spawn and go directly south; the description there made it sound as though that were a scripted path through the lava from their initial spawn points up onto the rock, at which point they would aggro normally. We had our melee run to that southern spot for the transition, while the casters moved to the west, near that large backdrop, to avoid the burn.

This didn't work out so well. The Sons spawned, went directly west into the casters, and things worked our predictably ("EEE! It burns!"). We managed to get around it by having warriors standing in the caster group pulling Sons out, but this was messy.

So from the moment the Sons spawn and for the following 10-15 seconds, how do they path and aggro? Is it purely standard aggro mechanics, such that everyone in the raid is on their aggro list and normal aggro rules apply? Is there some scripting involved? Do they share some aggro with Rag (I think not, but I'm clearly not the expert)?

What I'm thinking of is perhaps asking the druids to run to stand with the melee at 2:45, and asking only druids to heal (and heavily) for the first 10-15 seconds of the Sons. If the Sons' aggro works normally, it seems like this will guarantee that the Sons path away from the casters and directly to the druids, who could bear-form and spam demo shout until the other melee can get the mobs picked up. Paladins with BoSalv could handle spot-healing here to help keep aggro on the bears, and we'd have backup melee in with the casters to pick up strays. Is this a good plan, or am I misunderstanding the mechanics here?

I'm just looking for a way to control the first 10-15 seconds of the Sons. Thanks!

Everyone collapse to 1 area before they come out and they all go there. FN/Banish/fear if necessary and single target burn. Never use more than 1 fear/banish though - as you have to get them all down asap.

General rule of thumb while learning, 20 second raid warning = call collapse to spot.

Make sure to watch your banishes, banishing in caster camp = AoE still active while banished.

And as said, 2 banishes will = sons up with Rag repop, generally a no-no, keep it to 1 round of banishing.

Well, the most important thing to me has always been a very very tight collapse, dropping earthbinds/hunter aoe slow traps behind. Throw a couple warriors waiting on the outside of the pack to gather them up and bring them in, with locks banishing (AWAY from the group, that mana burn aura keeps working). In full FR these guys really don't hit hard, so you can tank 2 of them fairly easily.

Make sure you have a dedicated healer for each OT, and an assist train set up for whose target to kill first. If you have a suicidal mage, a FN away from casters is one method- the basic issue is always just to keep them -out- of the casters at all costs.

We have the entire raid collapse to the MT healers spot (south), where we have a warriors setup with a CS rotation, and we just AoE them down while we keep 1 banished to allow a bit of regen.

If you're learning rag its probably easier to just FF them down though, but whatever works for you.

http://pacifistguild.org/ragnaros/

If your having trouble with ragnaros I suggest you have everyone read this. It'll answer all of your questions.

Err...

IRT OP, it sounds like your raid isn't collapsing just before the Sons phase, which is a strategic element that lets you control the Sons' destination much better.

We collapsed into two groups, with the melee grouping at the southernmost spot on the inner lava ring (the red blob in the Pacifist map), and the casters grouping to the west of them (the western of the 3 green dots), which was how I'd read their suggested positioning ("At 2:50 ranged should start collapsing to the green spots. At 2:55 melee should start collapsing to the red area."). I think we positioned the casters a bit too far west, however, which gave us the nasty pathing.

I think the feedback I'm getting is that we should have the raid collapse farther to the south, with casters behind the melee spot rather than to the side. This should force Sons to run through the melee group where they can be tanked and snared. This also gives us a predictable Sons path from spawn toward the casters, so warriors can position to pick them up along that path.

Precisely. You should position your casters such that Sons pathing to them have to move through the killzone where your manaless classes are standing.