When we first started the Instructor we were getting breaks left and right. Made for an expensive night.

Then we heard that "+ to hit" gear helps stop the breaks. I thought "pffttt whatever!".

But, I went and got some bloodvine armor and found myself a level 60 humainoid to practice on.

I did 16 mind controls without + to hit and 16 mind controls with + to hit. Recorded it all in Excel and ran the numbers and, based off this small sample, + to hit made a HUGE difference in the mind control breaks.

Fair enough. The next night we killed the Instructor.

Now we're working on Faerlina and discovered that her little Enrage doesn't happen at 60 seconds -- it seems to happen between 50 seconds and 80 seconds. Meaning I need to hold the mind control for upwards of 30 seconds bringing in a real possiblity of a break before she enrages. Its happened to us a few times now. Lots of fun there.

So, my question is -> Does anybody know how much + to hit the MC priests for Naxx should have? Where does it max out at? +4? +5? +6? More? Less?

Finally -- for the Faerlina MC priests -- I JAM my sacrifice button as soon as I see her turn red and start to grow. However, it seems like she still gets 1 free shot in on the tank in Enrage mode before my sacrifice lands. Is that just "par" for the course. Do I need to have quicker fingers or is there a better signal I should go on?

Capped at +3% for MC'ing a level 60 humanoid.

Oh and your last question, it's fine if she gets one hit in ... it's hard to avoid really with lag and all, just scream more at the healers. Spam heal a bit around enrage time if you have to.

Faerlina's adds are level 61, so you'd need +4% hit to cap it.

I've never been able to prevent her getting one hit in, it's just something that'll happen. Her tank should probably be ready to hit shield block when enrage is possible, a crushing blow during enrage is pretty damn painful.

Having a second Priest as backup after you've been MCing for, say, 20 seconds can be done for the first three enrages if needed, though I'm not entirely sure on how long the Mind Exhaustion on Faerlina's adds last, I recall it being shorter than one minute.

We've kept up an unflasked tank through 10+ seconds of Enrage, it's ok if she gets in one hit.

As for enrage timer:

If you sacrifice BEFORE she enrages, she'll be unable to enrage for 30 seconds.
If you sacrifice AFTER she enrages, she'll be unable to enrage for 60 seconds.

However, she has to decide to 'use' the ability, meaning sometimes it could be 61 sec, sometimes 73. Never less than 60 if you sacrificed after the enrage.
She also doesn't spit poison for 30 seconds after a sacrifice. You can build your strategy around stacking DPS and sacrificing before the enrage every time, giving you less time to kill her, but you'll also get no poison bolts at all which relieves healing a lot.

Cap is 99%. Standard chance to hit is 96% against level 60 and 95% against level 61 so you need +3-4% depending on which encounter you're doing.

At Widow, shield yourself before MCs and the first poison bolt shouldn't interrupt your casting. RoF is damage over time and won't interrupt you either. Just make sure to wear FR gear and have a healer keep an eye on you. More than one poison bolt really shouldn't happen but if it becomes an issue for whatever reason, you could try using nature protection potions.

She nearly always gets at least one hit in before defrenzy. I suggest using FoT for the encounter as within a few weeks you'll be able to make the same flask last long enough to also down Maexxna with it (flask is very optional at Widow but almost essential at Maex). If healers know to do mad spam at frenzies, it's very possible to heal through it for quite a while. I think we've managed to keep MT alive for 15+ seconds after enrage with several healers dead and all on low mana, a couple of months back.

If you've got mad DPS you can silence her to start (around ~10 secs in) and then silence every 30-40 secs, you only have around 2:45 to kill her then of course so DPS has to go all out (healers can DPS too since no poison volleys).

Meh. I just take the gold hit and drink stoneshield/elixir of superior defense when I tank her. Enrage survival rates improved a lot after that.

By the way, I still don't think 60 seconds is accurate.

I feel the same way. I know for a fact last time we got a silence off after she was enraged, the emote was there, she had grown bigger, etc -- yet at about 45 seconds she decided to enrage again and it wiped us since we were not expecting it. We do all but one pre-emptively now to reduce the chances of something messing up, we'll do one after she enrages but have the MT ready to pop lifegiving and last stand and the healers are spamming fast heals.

I wear all the +hit gear I have, seeming that when I do the MC'ing on either razuv or fealina that's my only job and healing isin't a priority. Thus I have the following items to play around with (all easy to obtain)

Jin'do Judgment (Staff - 2% hit)
Bloodtingled Gloves (1%)
Eye of Something (Strat - 1% neck)
Bloodtingled Set (ZG - 4% hit)
Zazil Seal/Band (1% each - 1% bonus for set)
Angelista's Grasp (2%)

As for Faerlina, I've seen the enrage pop as soon as we get the 10s warning to sometimes up to 20s after the 60s timer. So with say 4%+ hit gear, you should be able to hold the adds the entire time.

well it becomes much easier if you kill her with 30s silences. we couldn't do that when we started on her, with some nax gear our dps is high enough now, but we needed 3:30 to 4 before. the main problem with the MCing is that outside effects influence the MC. you getting hit by poison volley or raf can interrupt MC. i think the add getting hit by it too, but not 100% sure on that. also if she uses raf on the tank and the tank moves away from your position, range is bad for MC duration as well. the MCing priest should use heavy resis gear along with the spellhit stuff. ony neck, flarecore stuff, whatever. fire res is more important then poison res, because nature prot pots + pwd shield + fast dispels can take care of poison volley. but if she casts raf on your position while you have MC up, you won't be able to move out. generally having fire prot + nature prot pots up all the time makes it easier. for the start you might want the whole raid to use those pots. about 15s before you start MC, you pwd shield yourself and another priest should be ready to recast shield on you if it gets worn out while MC is up.

I've done pretty much all of our MCing on Faer since the first kill, and the order I currently use is:

Silence on the pull.
Silence at roughly 55s.
Silence every 25-28s thereafter.

I call the offtank with each add in to stand beside faer, and MC and instantly silence when its needed. By doing that there's zero time for it to break. I used to spread them out a bit and time the silences til a second or so after she enrages so that the fight could be extended, but our raid DPS is now high enough that its unecessary.

If you are wearing 4-6% hit you will get almost no MC breaks at all. Our priest who MC's for Faerlina MC's at like the 50-55 second timer mark, and can hold it for however long needed to break enrage. We have like one MC break per month now when he has his ZG +hit gear and such on.

You need +4% hit for a level 60 mob, +5% hit for a 61, +6% hit for a 62 and +16% hit for 63 I believe, it maxes at +17% for 63 but you can't break the 1% miss rate.

Faerlina's adds are 61 ^^. And I believe MC works like Polymorph, in that every tick there is a resist check made, if it passes the spell continues, if it fails it breaks. If this is true, which I've observed it to be true with Polymorph, then it would further explain the usefulness of +hit.

Don't worry about -resist though, as long as the adds have Curse of Shadows on them, -resist won't help much at all.

Resurrecting a bit of an old thread here, but we're about to start Faerlina attempts. Was wondering if Faerlina begins the fight able to enrage (thus needing a Worshipper to be sacrificed at the very beginning), or if Enrage is on cooldown at the very beginning?

~60s until the first enrage - however it can happen earlier (seen it at about 50s and or later like 75s)

Expect Faerlina to Enrage anywhere for 48 seconds to 90 seconds into the fight for the first Sacrifice.

I usually call my OT to bring his Worshipper over to Faerlina at the 25 second mark. Then I try to MC that mob at about the 15 second mark.

After that I call the OT to bring the Worshipper over at about the 20 second mark and MC starting at the 10 second mark.

I've seen one occasion where Faerlina did not enrage until I had 3 seconds left on the Mind Control. WTF?!

We struggled for a couple weekends on her and then on Saturday we dropped her for the first time without even doing the last MC with nobody dying.

Almost like a light went on for the entire raid and everybody executed properly.

We usually sacrifice the first worshipper ~50s into the fight. We clean out the followers, bring Faerlina to the middle and then blow the first guy with 5-10s until the enrage. Then depending on how we're doing on dps, we blow some early and some after the enrage.

While learning the fight, I'd suggest blowing the first one early to give your raid some time to set up and then having your tank use cooldowns (LS / Gem / SW) on the other 3 and blowing them just after the enrage. The only change is that 1-2 hits while she's enraged, and with 10-11k life, your tank shouldn't have any problems surviving those hits if your priest is relatively quick on the silence.

MC and sacrifice the first instantly. You can get this done before she even volleys once.

Then at the 1min mark, we silence the enrage for a full 1min buffer. Then silence right before the next enrage, then right before that wears off. Thus she only enrages once and the MT can use last stand + gem to get a large buffer to make sure he doesn't get splattered during that enrage. After that, now that you no longer have to seriously worry about mass Rain of Fire deaths, you should easily be able to burn her down given 2 full minutes of silence.

So, overall, something like:
1) 0:05
2) 1:02
3) 1:59
4) 2:28

What's the cooldown of Enrage?

EDIT: To the second, I mean, or do you use 1 min exactly for your timing?

1 min.

Edit: I think what may be throwing you off in Gurg's order is the fact that if you don't interrupt her enrage, it doesn't put it on cooldown. The silence lasts for 30s and makes her unable to enrage, so if you cast it before she does, she has to wait another 30s before she can do it again. However, if you cast it just after she enrages, she has to wait 1min before she can do it again. Its a safety vs time tradeoff.

Am I the only one who claims to have seen her go more quickly than 1 min since the previous?

By quicker do you mean like, 58s? Or do you mean 30-40s? If its the 30-40s, my edit on the post above describes it, if its late 50s, its probably some discrepency in the timers.