It took me three dances, and now it's flawless. I still die from time to time in what appears to be the middle of the safe spot, which (it turns out) is due to me not strafing enough. Thanks for the tip, fellas.

If my all AU guild with everyone on 500+ ping in Heigan's room can drag 30+ people through that dance then anyone else should be able to ;)

I've found that people just take a while to click to it but once they do, they've pretty much got it down and wont die again. I got it on my third attempt and haven't died to the dance since. Some people took longer but basically, once you've got it, you've got it.

Never watched a video, took me 4 times to get it down so I never take damage.

It seems like this part brings out the moron in everyone, we usually lose 50% of our raid on a good night. Even some of our best players die consistently. Luckily this fight is almost 10-mannable, so it's ok, some people will just never learn to dance. My #1 cause of death is getting ported to the tunnel right before a speed phase, probably the most annoying fight mechanic ever.

Took us a laid back sunday afternoon to die. Roughly four hours of work.

I had it totally down after 4-5 attempts. Each attempt I learned more and more lines that splashed when. I guess some people don't learn the lines as fast as I did but everyone should be able to eventually. We still have people that die every time though. /shrug

We have betting pools up seeing how long I can last.

Took me about 4 tries before I stopped dying, various little misconceptions contributed to my delayed learning.

So far I'm one of 4 people who have been to all our heigan kills and have survived each one. I almost feel like some people have given up on learning how to dance as they still die in the first transition, and sometimes within the first few splashes.

1. Look at the cracks
2. Use strafe to 'save' your position.

Also, if you die dont say anything.

No blame it on lag, be clever! The raid leader has never heard that excuse.

The best excuse so far came from a guildie on our last attempts...

Him: "Listen, the animation is off on my computer! I'm ALLWAYS out of it and i get hit. I think it has something to do with my GFX-card overheating, i can even fraps it for you!"

Me: "Sure, send me a fraps"

Him: "Oh crap, i had my bad Harddrive in, so i can't fraps it. But i promise, it's my animations that's killing me"

Me: "Well, try to compensate by going a little more forward if you feel laggy?"

Him: "Doesn't work for some reason, i tried it"

......

We laughed about it in the officers chat and just decided to drop it... This is also the same guy who has had IMMENSE problems staying online at trash pulls... Best excuse there was "My ISP started sending me pop-up windows, so i had to turn of the modem a while!"

Some ppl... :p

Some ppl never learn the dance

Can I bet into that? :p

I died the first time on the dance, and the only time I've ever taken splashes has been when I've cast spells during the dance. For some reason, I can risk being hit by a splash even by casting an instant-cast spell on a target, without ever stopping movement. Strikes me as odd - I only ever do it now when I know I'm well ahead of the splash. Has anyone else encountered that?

Afaik there are 'two' places people look to figure out the pattern. Either you:

1) Look at the platform. The following are spots to stand relative to the platform:
Wave #1: Before the bottom left corner of the platform.
Wave #2: Before the middle of the platform
Wave #3: Before the bottom right corner of the platform
Wave #4: Past the bottom right corner of the platform

2) Look at the cracks. Too hard to explain in text, but either people look for cracks in front of them that 'wave up' and move to them, then stand still, or do something else. Can you tell I don't do this ? :s I'm not exactly sure, because I tend to think the platform is much easier to judge off.

Nice flash animation, by the way.

We have about 15 people die on Heigan, consistently. Same 15 people. Quite a lot of those who always survive, are those who survived the first 2-3 tries as well. Some people have a LOT of trouble even seeing the pattern in relation to the actual room, I've yet to see a person who understands where the waves hit not live unless external factors play in (Lag). Quite a lot of people try and follow others, which is also obviously bad (As everyone is usually about a second or so ahead, compared to where they are on your screen).

Does hitting the jump key also force a position update?

With my tests in WSG today, jumping didn't appear to have any effect. But I was lagging more than usual, and sometimes a strafe still took me a few seconds to leave travel form when indoors.

My favorite example of client/server position interaction is Thaddius. Everyone gets into position, keeps moving for about two seconds or so... then everyone snaps back into place for polarity.

I have also died on Heigan due to lag. I've experienced once an extra-long wait at a safe spot, and was then double-splashed.

I generally survive the dance, sometimes take one splash and renew myself. However if I don't pretty much constantly jump I will get hit. Exactly the same for me with Thaddius and the froggers, its not about learning to be positionaly right and timed correctly, its about spamming jump enough the server knows where I am.

However on one raid (which turned out to be our first kill) I was lagging quite badly and the splashes on my screen werent in line with the server timers at all (I had to be a whole splash ahead of the raid on my screen). However this only worked for a limited time before eventually the splashes i had been 'dodging' so far in the dance all decided to hit me at once in a glorious mess of spam. There was literally nothing i could do, so I can assure you that it is very much possible to be unable to dance due to connection. Since then though my only deaths have been in the maggot death tunnel (I still don't get that place, no matter what I do or what eyes are killed there are always 17 of the things flaying me).

You can strafe instead of jumping; It tends to be safer for updating I find (Try jump-cancelling spells versus strafe-cancelling; Jumping tends to be more unreliable, I've found). And also less laggy, in general.

As for the tunnel, well, thats what happen when people tread through it solo - With 3 people, its virtually impossible to die in there if people know what they're doing (Note: Not talking about the 'late' tunnel-ported, who simply can't survive no matter what they do, since they get splashed before they can get out). Go for the same eyes, use range where you can, and keep a constant pace and it should be fine. Most tends tend to occur from people 'running' into several flays, and spreading out.

It took me one try ever to learn the dance. However, I cannot say that I'm the master of it, since a certain cow in our guild has managed to dance through two full rotations and live during a server freeze. I could only time myself so far and survived one and a half rotations.

I think the topmost reason for people dying in the dance phase is the pack mentality inherent in WoW; they just can't be autonomous enough, but try to move themselves in relation to others in the raid, which will never work due to client-server-client lag. After we stressed how important it is to not look at where the others are, our survival count went up the roof. We have a bit less than ten regular raiders who still never make it through Heigan alive, though. If Heigan actually required most of the raid to make it, I'd have propably gone emo a long time ago and started penalizing people for dying, but now it's just a funny encounter that gives you reason to make fun of your guildmates.

This is one fight that has the potential to be incredibly annoying. We normally get it without too many problems but only after the obligatory "oh yes that's how you do it" wipe each week. The main problem I have is that any time you bring a new person along to it you can basically guarantee they are going to die. There just isn't any room for learning this fight on the fly and since we typically kill it each week as quickly as we can rather than spending time practicing those new people get little chance to try it out for themselves.

The flash animation is rather useful however :)

Took us about 2 real days of wiping to have enough alive to kill him (tonight). Basically went from wiping to the first dance, to getting him to about 35% then wiping, to finally killing him. The dance is harder than moving with polarities on Thaddius, but you just have way more leverage in the fight for screw ups than Thadd, so in the end it is a lot less frustrating. Basically only 20-25 people have to learn the dance, as opposed to like 38+ with Thaddius.