Can anyone who's been doing these packs for a while clue me in to a good way to handle them? Our guild got to them for the first time last night. While we were managing to get through them most of the time, we were losing far too many people, and going much too slow to beat the spider pack respawns. We tried tanking everything with warriors/druids, pulling the pack by nuking a single cultist, spreading out and LOSing, etc, etc. It seems like there's far too much damage incoming for us to be doing anything right here.

For the cultist groups we use a system of controlled anarchy. By that I mean the bolt volleys are kept out of LOS while the rest of us run around like maniacs dsping the rest.

Have a hunter pet pull them in to the room directly after anub's door(the door that opens when you kill him). We have found that if your quick you can pull all of them in to the room with out getting re spawns and it makes them really easy to separate them out if you pull them in this room. Make sure you have a hunter assigned to each Naxxramas Acolyte to pull them away from each other the rest is just cake.

we manage to wipe to pulling an extra group (usually the patrol spiders) about every other week.

but yeah, we have a hunter pull and run out of LOS so they all run up while we sort of haphazardly nuke them down.

We mark up one tank per mob. We go all out dps on the ones that cast shadowbolts. Hunters have their pets out with growl on, and help the tanks on the ones with the knockback. Once the shadowbolt ones are dead dps splits ffa onto the knockback ones. We just heal through all the ae damage at the beginning and kill the mobs quick.

We used to die a bunch, but since adding hunter pets to the above, we will only ever lose 2 people max per pull. At first hunter pets would die a lot, but our healers since adjusted to healing the pets too and now they don't die either.

Edited to note: Make sure the ones casting shadow bolts aren't that close together, or your melee dps will eat arc explosions ontop of the bolt spam.

When I pull, I mark the acolytes (3-5 shadowbolters). Shoot and run, cheetah'ing to the room that had the Cryptfiends and 5 Spiders.

1 Tank/Mage per Acolyte to counter, and each of them can just about duo any Acolyte by the time everyone else kills the Cultists. When I DPS, I use the stairs and ledges to kite and not get knocked back.

Using that first room requires a bit of speed on the pulls, so you can't slack on killing, rezzing and probably at most 1 wipe.

We take the very last group in GWF's room, but that's chaotic as there's no real "cover" to hide behind.

As mentioned above use the room right after Anub. The layout there is perfect. We use a hunter to pull and then run down to the center of the room. Acolytes are peeled by hunters and then tanked in the various corners and alcoves of the upper level. So only the tanks and their healers are getting hit by the damage from a single acolyte at most. Cultists are killed first on the main floor. Then acolytes are killed one by one on the upper level. The difference in elevation and line of sight constraints protect the bulk of the raid from overlapping AoE damage. We rarely have any casualties at all from acolyte/cultist pulls with this arrangement although the occasional double skitterer pull still hurts. Also make sure that the hunter responsible for the pulls goes back to mark the next group as soon as the pull is complete. Chain pulling this way we usually clear all the trash in 18 -25 minutes.

I don't know if this is a good method or not, but we do the reverse of what's been posted above. Hunters, one per mob, shoot the Cultists and kite them to the stone room, mages counterspell the Acolytes. We tank and dps the Acolytes in the skitterer hall while the hunters kite the Cultists around the stone room, and when the Acolytes are all down they bring the Cultists back. We found the knockback a much harder problem to death with than shadow volley which is how we ended up at this strategy.

Said by a shaman, hint hint! Oh well, you're a pally ... *taunt*

That's horde's way of dealing with them, really trivializes it.

Here's what we do, works very well.

We pull them back to the big square room after the door. The Acolytes are pre-Lucky Charmed, picked up by tanks before entering the room, and tanked behind the corners of the door, out of LOS of the raid waiting in big room. The Cultists are allowed to run freely into the room, where we make short work of them. Once they are down, the tanks drag their Acolytes one-by-one into the door, where each is dispatched with easily and alone. Also, the tanks are all stuffed in groups with Priests and healed with PoH (LoS), making it very simple to keep the Acolytes under control.

Essentially never any deaths.

Wow, all kinds of different stuff. We can't even kill Faerlina, but the trash we've mastered.


We have all the healers/mages/warlocks at the ramp. 2 tanks at the Entrance who pull and tank 2 Acolytes each. Hunters pull all the Cultists to the Cave (we clear out the 2 itty bitty packs) where all remaining warriors and all the rogues go. Ranged DPSes the Acolytes one at a time (and if there's 5 Acolytes, one goes untanked and is just counterspell-smacked by the mages/shaman) while melee DPSes the Cultists one at a time. The 2 Aco tanks are easy to keep up, and the Ramp group should never take any damage from the Acos as long as they stand far enough back. I mark the next group before we are full mana, then I pull the next set.

Extremely effective and easy solution: Pet pull into the big room, one tank demoshout tanks all acolytes while the raid is positioned far from him. Peel the cultists off the tank and kill them, then kill off the acolytes with ranged damage. This is extremely easy, we never have a single death and every time we manage to pull two packs we take them down aswell without a single death. Maybe we should start to pull two on purpose? Be sure to make fun of your hunters to really force them into pulling as fast as possible:] And we kill fearlina before anything starts to respawn.

We just do every single pack right at the entrance to Faerlina's room. Main camp on the ramp, warriors up against the opposite wall of the cavern. Warriors grab the acolytes and keep them up against the wall so they're OOR of the camp. The raid then just doggypiles the cultists and kills them as quickly as possible. Once the cultists are down, send in the DPS and wipe up the acolytes.

We pull them in, split up into groups of 2/3 people and a healer and each take one, its fun and although a bit chaotic, it breaks up a dull spider wing clear.

We have our tanks inside the corridor to GWF tanking the Acolytes out of los of the rest of the raid, coupla priest poh spamming through the wall while the rest of the raid run around like monkeys on crack assist training down the cultists. Works well for us :)

The room before the mobs is that large for a reason. :)
Spread out, keep the shadowballers away from the raid and just zerg down the rest. "Controlled anarchy", I like that term, it's very appropriate.

Do it in the first room after Anub'Rhekan gate (Room which contains 2 pulls of 6x spider 1x Crypt stalker thingy.)

'4 or 5 tanks top of stairs (depending on number of acolytes.)

Hunters pulls cultists down (Or they just aggro on healers and run south in the room). Gets killed first.

Tanks interrupt Acolytes as often as they can (50% of shadowbolts interrupted)

Even made a picture off it... First time we got here we had more or less NO idea what to do. We just told tanks "Hold acolytes at stairs or around, spread them out a bit. Everyone else kill Cultists first". We had 2 deaths on our first pull... Now we more or less chainpull as soon as last mob from previous pack dies. Never wiped unless we got 2 packs.

Picture just for you :)

Rogues can kick, warriors can pummel or shield bash the cast, mages can even counterspell it. Lots of ways to interrupt it.

Yup. We pull them to the room just past anub, assign one tank per acolyte and one rogue to assist the tank. Between shield bash and kick, they should never get off a shadow volley.

They key, in my opinion, is pulling them back to a completely free room. Allows the raid to spread out without the risk of adds, and gives everyone a little more lead time in getting their targets and positions as they're running after the hunter.

We pretty much put tanks on the acolytes and just AoE everything down. Mages CS the casters when they can, and the tanks can shield bash. We also a firing squad type thing where all the ranged classes stand on one spot, and we use felwood gatherer for a countdown. Everyone times their spell to land 3 seconds (the aimed shot cast time) after the "Click it now" message comes up. Generally between the mages and hunters, an acolyte dies before it moves everytime, and since the mobs are sitting, most of the multishots crit on all the surrounding mobs. Since you're on the hill right there where those skitterer spawns are, you get knocked around like 1ft instead of 15yrds or whatever it really is. You really only have to be careful on the first pack because if you don't pull them up the hill enough, you'll pull the second pack.

This obviously isn't the most elegant way to do it, but it works and we rarely have people die.

To clarify a bit more, we team 1 shaman up with 1 warrior on each acolyte. 2 interrupts, they don't get many off and what they get off you can heal through. We also tend to have our ranged pull together, can pretty much splatter a cultist right out. One less to worry about.