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.

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 always (well, since the LOS bug was fixed and he was killable in a reasonable way) fought chromaggus right outside his room. the entire raid stands to the left of the doorway and we tank him just on the edge of the doorway so the tank is in LOS of the healers but the healers are out of LOS of the breaths. everyone else ducks in and out to DPS, except time lapse, where all the DPS takes teh time lapse and an OT runs way back behind chromaggus and pulls him back there until the time lapse runs off.

we give sand to tanks/healers/hunters, as you said. we never really used consumables, but we didn't really use consumbables for any fights back then.

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?

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.

Some of our DPS classes even click off their MotW buffs so they're less likely to resist time lapse. Pussies.

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