Last night at Emps we ran into something that we'd never seen before--Mages pulling aggro on Vek'lor. Just wondering whether anyone else has this a serious concern. I used to be able to do basically whatever I wanted as long as the transition was clean, and it wasn't even a factor. Yesterday, it was a problem multiple times for myself and other Mages.
Two reasons come to mind:
--With more Mages repseccing Fire, we have a rougher aggro profile, which is bad for a constantly-resetting fight. Also, the chance for dangerous Ignites has gone way up (once yesterday, I have a 5-stack for 2400 on Vek'lor, and had to shout at everyone to kill it, or I would have died).
--Alliance Mage aggro generation went from 40% to 49% in the patch, a nontrivial increase.
I guess I'm just wondering whether other people have noticed a recent increase in the danger here, and in general, what you have your Mage do at Emps to be safe.
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Also, has anyone ever gotten to the bottom of the problem with Vek'lor running after people? It is really annoying.
Ban fire on the caster emp. Make the fire mages use frostbolts or missiles. Secondly, make sure the casters are not leaving big dots up on the caster (e.g. doom), and make sure they stop firing just before the teleport.
The basic mechanic is, vek'lor adds a chunk of hate to the person closest to him when he ports. It takes about ~2k ish damage to break that hate. If a mage fires off a spell right before the port and it doesn't reach the emp before the port it'll hit on the other side of the room after the initial aggro is established. If it crits big, it will pull aggro. The solution is to stop casting right before the port (e.g. at the 5sec warning) and go shoot a bug instead.
Similarly, if the caster has an ignite up or a curse of doom goes off right after the port there is no way the initial aggro is holding it on your tank (whether you use a war or a lock).
I have seen exactly the behaviour you described lead to some very frustrating low % wipes, causing us to generally put the fire mages on bugs or tell them to go easy on the fire and use frost instead.
edit: didn't see your last question.
As to the emp running after the tank on the switch - we found that problem happening consistently on one day leading to a string of wipes. Our solution was to tell the warlock it was happening to, to run out faster and to run further. Make sure the guy he's chasing isn't spending time turning and is really starting to run the instant the port happens. Have him run all the way to the stairs, and up them if necessary, stopping when he's sure the caster is firing shadowbolts. My theory is if you're a little slow on running out, the caster finds you a little too close for shadowbolt range when he looks for targets so he starts running.
Think it would be easy to just switch to using frostbolt about 6-7 seconds before the port. Should give time for ignites to wear off and for the transition to be safe while maintaining damage.
Well, 2000 is the value KTM uses--I have no idea how or how precisely that was determined.
But, I need 2000*1.3 = 2600 to pull aggro. I'm generating 49% threat, I should have to do 2600/.49 = 5306 damage before I'm in trouble, and that's before the first Searing Pain.
Banning Fire, in lieu of spells for which we have no threat reduction talents, seem counterproductive. Especially since Mages are some of our top DPS on the Emps. It would seems like the right thing to do would be have Mages DPS bugs during the few seconds surrounding the ports, and Vek'lor in between.
I suppose what I also really want to know is, what do experienced Emps-tanking Warlocks do to maximize threat?
Ban fire on the caster emp. Make the fire mages use frostbolts or missiles. Secondly, make sure the casters are not leaving big dots up on the caster (e.g. doom), and make sure they stop firing just before the teleport.
Is there an entirely safe way to use Doom, given the randomness of the port timing?
I'm assuming you use a warlock to tank Vek'lor if you're DPS'ing him. Seems to me that you'd want to definitely stay away from fire, stay away from the spikey damage... instead, use frostbolts for smooth controlled damage output.
As for Vek'lor, we use a warrior to tank him, but still run into the issue occasionally of him chasing the tank. I can't quite put a finger on it, but it seems to be related to exactly how far away the tank is when the teleport stun is over and Vek'lor wakes up. There's a certain range where Vek'lor will use his Arcane Burst... and if the tank is JUST outside that range by a sliver, he'll chase. It almost always seems to be a problem with the tank not getting range quick enough. It is very frustrating though, especially when he chases, gets close enough to do an Arcane Burst, and punts the tank close to the healers and then triggers a blizzard as a result. :/
Since we use a warrior to tank him, we just have our mages fire off one frostbolt, something like that each cycle.. otherwise they are on bug duty. I think our poor bug tank hardly ever actually gets to "tank" them anymore.
Ban fire on the caster emp. Make the fire mages use frostbolts or missiles. Secondly, make sure the casters are not leaving big dots up on the caster (e.g. doom), and make sure they stop firing just before the teleport.
Is there an entirely safe way to use Doom, given the randomness of the port timing?
Our warlock *tanks* use doom, and it always scares me, but they think it's great. What they do is slap it down about half way through their tank cycle so it goes off in the middle of their next tank cycle - this gives a fair bit of leway on either side during the cycle to account for the random duration of the port. It hasn't bitten us yet.
As to the fire thing on the caster, it's not just your damage - it's rolling an ignite that is scary. A reasonable rolled ignite will outthreat a warlock easily - especially considering the warlock is stacking SR, not +dmg. I've seen a fire mage pull aggro around 7-8 seconds during the cycle due to a large ignite and crit outthreating the warlock. Vek'lor turned and shadowbolted the mage twice and then went back to the warlock. The mage simply did too much damage - and for fire mages it's easy to do. What's worse is you can't stop it unless your other mages stop rolling the ignite for you.
The reason to prefer frost is it's more predictable damage.
Our warlock *tanks* use doom, and it always scares me, but they think it's great. What they do is slap it down about half way through their tank cycle so it goes off in the middle of their next tank cycle - this gives a fair bit of leway on either side during the cycle to account for the random duration of the port. It hasn't bitten us yet.
Yes, a 6k crit doom at the wrong time will have vek'lor running across the room. Considering the port has a random time component, you have to be pretty careful timing it.
Yes, a 6k crit doom at the wrong time will have vek'lor running across the room. Considering the port has a random time component, you have to be pretty careful timing it.
It's actually very safe since a warlock in shadow res gear will be lucky to see a CoD hit for even 4k, which is only an issue if it hits just after (within 10 seconds) of the port before searing pain spam has generated enough aggro to make it a non-issue anyways. Also, CoD can't crit :p (or at least in ~70 days of play time at 60 I haven't seen it). I'm not sure if you'd want your non-tank warlocks using, but as long as you have at least 3 warlocks your tanks definitely should be.
Edit:
Banning fire damage on the emps is absurd. Just be careful with the threat your mages are generating. If nothing else keeping up the imp scorch debuff is a non-trivial threat increase.
We've always had warrior tanks and then melee only on Vek'nilash and just burned it down with rogues, hunters and dps warriors etc, with the mages blasting the bugs. It maybe be "wussy" or outdated to some but we've never wiped yet because of mages pulling aggro.
We also use dual warrior tanks. We allow a frost mage in the raid (if we have one) to do small dps on Vek'lor, but that's about it. They're basically on bug duty.
I've noticed sometimes when running out for transitions (approx twice a fight?) Vek'lor will run after me, and whack me a couple of times. I think there's a range you have to reach where he decides he can't hit you easily and he wants to cast instead; You have to get out of that range during the teleport-stun. If you don't he often takes a couple of swings at you before casting. Since you're running out and have your back to him, it's quite easy for this to be a wipe (crit/crushing since no block, followed by a shadow bolt and a 4k arcane burst).
Since the patch it's better, but on the off chance I'll still eat an arcane burst too.
I've never had him run towards me when he's already at range - only when he's at melee range or only a small amount outside it.
Just randomly or maybe you've lagged and too a bit longer to get out than normal?
Occassionally as a priest I notice the melee dps will take a bug explosion but that's really it. I notice them taking damage and it usually turns out to be lag or some other weird instance that caused them to stay in range for a fraction of a second longer than normal. Just my observation though; I have to say running back and forth with the melee is a-nno-ying. ><
Edit: For the OP, what on earth mod is it that puts all the emp tanks/bug tanks/dps/healers etc into those windows? Seems like the mod has multi purpose uses in a raid group, since it also appears to be monitoring the debuffs you are able to curse and the raid status?
And do you get to see the fight with all those boxes everywhere, lol?
Edit: For the OP, what on earth mod is it that puts all the emp tanks/bug tanks/dps/healers etc into those windows? Seems like the mod has multi purpose uses in a raid group, since it also appears to be monitoring the debuffs you are able to curse and the raid status?
And do you get to see the fight with all those boxes everywhere, lol?
The unit frames, and all the other things you mentioned, are RDX5.
My UI is going through a transitional period right now.
We probably haven't downed the emps quite as much as others here, but we've had a fire mage pull aggro once while the warlock was tanking, then die and things went as normal. Now he downranks Scorch a little I think. Actually, I'd say Scorch is safer than Frostbolt at the end of a teleport cycle since it has no travel time. The main things mages need to watch is when the warlock needs to move away from bugs/blizzard, because they have stopped generating threat while they're moving (for the most part)
In regards to warlock tanks using CoD - CoD takes 60s exactly and the teleports are 30-40s apart. CTRA announces based on when the 30s mark hits, so its 10s warning might be a 10s or 20s warning. If the warlock tank casts CoD just after the 10s warning, they are guaranteed to have it tick when they are tanking again. If both teleports are long, that's 19s + 40s = 59s not tanking. If both are short, that's 9s + 30s = 39s not tanking (and they're guaranteed to tank for more than 21s, so it's good). You can play around with when they cast it to get the average to be a little after the port. When it ticks soon after the port, that saves some healing. When it doesn't, there's no loss.
09/10/06, 5:08 PM
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