As Gurgthock so presciently noted, this weekend we went in and easily handled Ebonroc and Firemaw. On Saturday and Sunday we went to work on Chrommagus, and after 10+ wipes I'm pretty confident that we understand the basics but could probably greatly increase our efficiency as we get closer to the first take-down.

Progress for first weekend: took Chrom to 75% twice, needing about 3-4 minutes to get to 75%. Didn't use any consumables to achieve this.

Breaths were: Incinerate and TL.

1. The first big question we have: which positioning is best for learning the encounter? We know of three (and tried 2 of them) options:

( A ) Use the classic "Inner Sanctum positioning". Place Chrom next to the three cubby-holes on the last Lab Technician floor, right below the curving ramp. We tried this for the majority of the attempts but were getting complaints that it split up the group too much, making it technically more challenging as decursing / healing duties had to be performed by the same people (rather than other positions where everyone is lumped together, allowing some folks to "just" heal and some to "just" decurse).

( B ) Use the "easy mode" positioning - fight Chrom right outside his chamber. Keep the entire group together except for OTs. This seemed "easier" than (A), although woopsy pulls happened 3x much to our chagrin.

( C ) Pull Chrom to the little corner at the bottom of the curving ramp. Place ranged on the upper level, MT on the lower level with his healers and a few mages for decursing. When TL hits, OT just runs up the ramp and jumps off again, in time for the MT to pick Chrom back up (until aggro finally tips to an OT). Rinse/repeat until down.

We haven't tried ( C ) but it sounds promising. Perhaps there are other, better positions? If not, which one of the three I mentioned should we stick to?

2. As we understand it, you want everyone (except MT) to hide out of LoS for breaths. Except for TL - on that one, we were having rogues/mages/warlocks go into LoS in order to wipe aggro. We did NOT have MT/OT healers (and the pally for hunters) go into LoS due to the stun effect. Something tells me we're slightly off with this. What's the best approach? *Edit: OTs are hiding, of course.

3. We were only giving Hourglass Sand to MT/OTs/healers/hunters (because of tranq shot duty). It was our assumption that other classes can live with the stun. Good/bad?

4. Once we start using consumables, I'm assuming Flask of Titans + Stoneshield pots for the MT. Distilled Wisdom for MT healers. Anything else to concentrate on?

I'll be more than happy to clarify anything or answer questions. As a side note, I'd like to thank the EJ forum community for past responses to my posts - the majority of posters are very thoughtful, knowledgeable and willing to help.

1. I can't really tell you what the 'right' option is because different positions work for different guilds (mostly based on how they set up their first few kills). We just put him outside his chamber in the doorway and it works fine for us.

2. On timelapse, you want warriors to have aggro right? (both for controlling Chromaggus or switching tanks after a wipe). So you obviously don't want your warriors getting hit with it (aside from the current tank of course).

3. Short of hunters and maybe a few tanks having 1 for TL tanking, I honestly don't think anyone really 'needs' sand at all. People just need to be more aware if they have bronze and move early. Though if you are learning the encounter, it certainly helps to give it to hunters, healers and tanks.

There's actually a 4th spot which is pretty decent for learning but lends itself to many annoying low % resets with TL. The suppression room where you fight broodlord you can have the MT in one cubby, the DPS+DPS decursers/healers in the one beside it. MT healers on suppression room first floor. Very doable there.
My guild recently switched to the IS posiitoning after getting TL for almost 3-4 months straight and having several 3% resets.

//Zuckas

Exactly as we understand it. Sounds like the REAL point is "don't let your OTs get hit with it, ever" but who cares about everyone else. It won't matter if you have mages/warlocks etc get exposed to TL or not.

My guildmates and I tried a few positions out and found the "easy mode" one to be the best.

For timelapse you need to have offtanks, and an offtank healing team. When time lapse is about to hit everyone except the OT and his healer(s) should get out in to the open and eat time lapse. The big blue dog should then run to eat your off tank's face. Your OT then moves the dog back to the normal tanking position and when timelapse's wears off he eats the MTs face again. After about 6 time lapses chrom will stick to the OT and not go back to the tank that started the encounter. The guy that was MT should carry on building aggro along with another OT to make sure he is handled during the Time Lapse stun. My guild struggled with TL chromm because we lacked geared tanks to be OT, and then have to MT chromm. If you are very lucky and have lots of 6/8 wrath tanks than flasks maybe overkill, but if your tanks are in 3 or 4 wrath and the rest might and what not, then flasks are the way to go. Stoneshield pots are great if you get the Acid breath. For incinerate you want to make sure your tank is at 100% before it hits him, and maybe get him to use a fire prot pot if things are getting desperate with your healer's mana.

You shouldn't need more than 3 tanks for TL chromm. That is MT, OT1 and OT2, if it goes on for much longer mana will be an issue for healers as at less than 20% chromm hits pretty hard. Its an annoying fight for dps'ers with the constant resistance "fun" but your rogues and dps warriors can really shine. Buff them to the eyeballs so they can get him down fast.

Edit: I forgot about the sand. Sounds like you have the same approach as us. MT and OTs get sand first, than a few to healers, couple to hunters and the rest of the raid doesnt really need any. If you use CT raid then you get 10 seconds to hide, the stun is 3 seconds (this is from memory and is no doubt wrong), so only extreme bad luck would make the stun a problem.

We have two 5/8 Wrath warriors and a couple more at 3/8 or 4/8.

We used position (C) for the longest time. It worked well enough, though I can't say its ideal - especially during time lapse when it becomes a huge pain in the ass if your OTs can't get down the ramp fast enough. We now tank Chromag at position (B) and you're right - its easy mode there. May as well start there I think. We split the raid though, all the DPS goes in the back with the OTs on one side, rogues/mages on the other, along with some minimal healing/decurse for those guys. The majority of healers + a few mages stay up front to keep the MT up.

Edit- I cannot emphasize enough how much of a pain in the arse position (C) is. Your tanks will constantly miss pulling him to the right spot, they'll go out of line of sight more often (especially if you have the idiots that like to jump around while tanking), if you have to reposition healers/decurse to the top they have to run through chromag (and possibly a breath), and the guys up top are very iffy on being out of LoS for the breaths. Position (B) is the absolute safest way to do it.

Ok, that makes sense (I like the clarification on who eats TL - all the DPS!), but one thing I'm a little confused on is how you manage to heal the OT while he's "pulling Chrom back there"...do OT healers just get into LoS for the 8 or so seconds needed?

If you think position B is easy mode, why are you even botherring to position anywhere else? He doesn't drop better loot based on the position you tank him. I learned it doing a bit different version of position B, later on joined a guild that did position A.

Just have OT healers switch back and forth eatign every other timelapse.

Once we went with the ramp positioning (Chrommagus on the ramp facing down, MT within LoS of all healers on the 2nd level), the fight became pretty trivial. There's a bit of a learning curve in regards to MT/OT positioning (and having your OTs jump down with Chrommagus aggro can result in some nasty mispositioning if they haven't used this tactic before), but that's about it.

you don't really need to heal him. he starts moving before time lapse and gets to the wall. since all your DPS soaks TL, chromaggus will run after him, TL will run off, and he'll go back to the MT. if he does need some healing f or some reason (he's slow, aggro doesn't go back to MT, etc), a few healers can run out and take care of him before the dog comes back.

Simplest in my view has always been doorway, as Moz said.

I put all warriors and rogues (except MT, duh) inside behind him, with two shamans (2 paladins if Alliance), one druid, and one priest, to keep the warriors/rogues cured. We all duck behind one of the columns on each breath. The ranged DPS and other healers outside just move towards the wall out of LOS. If it isn't time lapse, healers never have to move because they can use the corner of the wall to get LOS on the tank without getting hit by breaths ever.

If it is Time Lapse, then everyone stays in except for all the inside warriors and the 4 healers inside. The four out-of-LOS healers heal the OT during Time Lapse, and then Chrom goes back to the MT (or the OT becomes the new MT, after a few). Pretty easy.

This is very helpful, thank you. Almost makes me wonder why we need more than 2-3 OT healers...?

Two or three OT healers means you are covered if your hunters were slack and he is enraged, or if you get some shitty luck and he crits a great deal.

You meant out, right? Just making sure I didn't read this wrong.

By "in" I mean "in LOS."

When Chromaggus Time Lapses everyone eats the Time Lapse except:
All non-MT warriors
4 healers behind Chromaggus.

Completely clear. Thank you.

Positioning stays the same either way; just have the added joy of eating TL for those you specified.

the frenzy timer is predictable, and he will not frenzy mid-TL while you are stunned. he DOES frenzy immediately prior to breaths, so if your hunters are slow in tranqing he can be frenzied for a TL.

Hrmm I could've sworn I've seen him frenzy when I was still stunned to time lapse. /shrug might chalk that one up to Oceanic pingtimes for the hunters not catching him right before the TL breath if what you're saying is right. Keeping hunters out of LoS during TL did help us to keep the doggie tranqed. And it's risk free.

Background: An alliance guild, have had 3 chrommagus kills, and are still working on Nefarian. The last chrommagus kill (last night!) was one-shotted, our first kill involved time lapse. In summary it’s not an especially taxing fight (we find Vael far, far, harder), but it does require organization and concentration from everyone.

1. For us the doorway, I haven’t seen a reason to 'not' take the fight here. A paladin with a bubble pull can get back to the tank alive, and when dealing with a time lapse the off-tank can head towards chrommy's 'cage' where he started. As you stated his aggro range is larger than expected after the first wipe, however by having the raid buff against the left hand wall halfway back and then moving forwards into the left corner everyone can get into position without pulling him. At that point just have the MT run in to get aggro.

2. Assuming no time lapse we just have everyone avoid the breaths bar the MT. The exception is the hunter (or hunters) who are taking the tranq shots. They may 'eat' a breath whilst tranqing pre-frenzy depending on timings, and they will take breaths during the frenzy to ensure we don't combine a frenzy and an enrage. A shield can be useful if well timed! For time lapse we make sure that every DPS'er bar the off-tanks takes the breath, however 4 priests rotated in and out of alternate time lapse's in two groups of two to ensure constant healing on the MT.

3. We handed sand out mainly to hunters, but gave a smaller supply to MT\OT and a couple of key healers. All classes are asked to 'hang on' to them unless essential or we have reached the frenzy. If people have bronze affliction remind them to start moving early for the breaths incase they get a stun.

4. We haven’t used any flasks anywhere in game yet other than on Nefarian, I believe our MT tank is in 7\8 might but would need to check, I am really saying this to indicate that they aren't essential, but the consumables you listed I assume would make life easier for the healers.

Perhaps if you were to indicate the cause of the wipes (in your mind) someone more knowledgeable than me might be able to add something! Good Luck!

Edit: Apologies for repetition, there were 3 replies when I started writing this!

put a druid and priest (and pally if alliance) on OT group so they can decurse themselves and OT as well. Its very important to assign a few decursers (2 pallies on ally, 2-3 priests on horde, plus 2-3 druids) so no one ever transforms.

The OT group moves out of LOS when MT grabs aggro, after a few sunders OT can jump in and start sundering as well. If no TL Ot group moves back to main group and does their normal thing. OT sunders every now and then to build aggro and makes sure to be out of LOS when TL kicks. As mentioned healing on OT is very light since chrom will bounce back to MT after just a few secs. Every now and then we have main group eat a TL, its left to peoples discretions (usually just 1 or 2 is enough to avoid chrom running loose, the only thing for mages to watch out for is when they output massive dmg after a shimmer)

dont use consumables except maybe titans on MT, as long as he's got 7k+ HP and hunters are on the ball with tranq rotations Chrom should be fine. Healers need to downshift ranks and stay on top of decursing, most of the healers should be at 50%+ mana at end of fight easy even without any innervates (we use innervates on mages and locks).

Do not, absolutely not, allow healers to avoid TL. As hunter healers recently I dodged TL and we had our first chromaggy wipe in I don't know how long- all thanks to me (I feel special). You -will- have a tankswap at some point, usually a fair number- and at that point you really, really don't want healers to have a lot of aggro, let alone dps. Everyone who's not OT or related eats TL.

I adore positioning A. I don't like B, I detest C, but the poisitioning on A absolutely minimizes the amount of movement you have to do, regardless of class. It's definately a fit to guild choice, but our guild just offers a sacrifical rogue for the inital pull, who occasionally survives, to get to our positioning which we love.

TL is actually easier for healers, and incin is a burst dps that our dps warriors use to fill rage bars (yes, really. Yes, our healers hate them. I love my guild). You should have quite a bit of spare healing to throw around, so if your healers/decursers are running OOM you really need to impress on melee the importance of stepping out of LoS.

One thing that made our lives a lot easier was the 4 hunter, 1 shaman group. I assume a paladin can sub in for this- more effectively, even. That healer is responsible for decursing/healing those hunters to the exclusion of everyone else- this lets the hunters simply not worry about eating breaths if they have to, and the psychological factorof knowing that there's that safety net geniunely helps our hunters do thier job more effectively. If you're horde, make sure you have a priest for the dispells, and regardless make SURE you give that healer 1-2 sand.

Keep decursers with the melee/offtanks, melee doesn't take more than a bandage + decurse (for the most part). As a rule they can keep themselves alive.

Flask on the MT is good- stoneshield on cooldown might be overdoing it. Make sure the MT is decursed asap (curse doubles fire damage, and 8k in fire is enough to ruin everyone's day). Top up the MT before every breath, make SURE you have all shadow priests on decurse while all inspiration priests are on the MT.

At 75%, the fight is sustainable. Whats' happening? Are you losing the MT? DPS? 3-4 minutes is kinda long for 25%, though my guild's first kills clocked in at 14-17 minutes. The in/out shit is really hard to learn to start (though Firemaw helps), so give your dps a break if theyr'e causing the wipes.

I love you.