Gothik: fine tuning your raid

Digo · 10/20/06, 4:37 PM

I at once love and loathe this fight. The pure amount of shit going on, the fact that you actually get to use crowd control in a raid setting, combined with a multi-spawn fight where a single baddy with 2 billion HP isn't the focus makes me pretty happy with the general direction the raid game is going. However, I find that the amount of detail that goes into setting up your raid for this fight can be frustrating. If we don't have 6 mages, 7 priests, and at least 7 warriors, the night almost always ends in tears. I also find it kind of disappointing that for being one of the hardest fights in the game, his loot table is so lackluster.

Anyway, what is your ideal raid setup for Gothik and how overboard do you go with consumables?

Nurru · 10/20/06, 4:41 PM

We often do it with 5 priests, 5 mages and it's fine so long as a priest doesn't get gibbed by a loose deathknight. It means we have no priests on dead side though. As for warriors, I've never seen us adjust our raid or say "We don't have enough warriors" on Gothik, I suspect we've been doing it with our usual 4-6 per raid.

We don't use any consumables outside of the normal raid buffs and pots people may feel like using, though when we learned it we gave dead side arcane protection potions.

♦ Praetorian · 10/20/06, 4:51 PM

We used to buff way too much for this fight, until I realized that the buffs were largely immaterial to the outcome and that it was all about execution. We've wiped to Gothik with Loatheb buffs and we've killed him flawlessly on the first attempt with no consumables more substantial than mana pots and some Giants/Mongoose on the dead side.

I won't do Gothik if we don't have six priests. We don't need seven -- seven is nice, but not a huge deal. Mages don't matter as much: Six is optimal for our strat, but having 4 or 5 doesn't change too much really. We probably could make it work with only five priests if we absolutely had to, but I want no part of that.

A typical raid group for us for Gothik will be 6 warriors, 6 priests, 6 mages, 3 warlocks, 4 hunters, 6 rogues, 4 druids, 5 shamans.

Odds on "live"side, Evens on deadside.
One warrior at each spawn point on the liveside, and then two mages and a warlock assigned to each spawn point as well. I stay over there to coordinate and heal (and get all loose trainees on me instead of priests with my sweet heal aggro), and the remaining slots are filled with healers (priests preferably, up to 7 if we happen to have 7).
Deadside is all shaman/druid healing, with all the other warriors/rogues/hunters in the raid.

Having fewer mages is no big deal to me -- we just have a warlock by that spawn solo the trainee that ordinarily would be sheeped if we had an extra mage.

I can get more specific about spawn orders and such, but the OP was mainly about group makeup, so there you go.

Gothik is among my favorite fights in the zone, along with 4H. (Fun fact: The designer who made Gothik and 4H also made my least favorite fight in the zone. Go figure.)

inveratulo · 10/20/06, 4:54 PM

Originally Posted by Praetorian

... (Fun fact: The designer who made Gothik and 4H also made my least favorite fight in the zone. Go figure.)

and that would be ... grobb? gluth?

snape · 10/20/06, 4:57 PM

Wow. P's insight makes me want to change what we do. O.O

Currently, we use 6-7 mages and 6-7 priests, 1 warrior, 3-4 warlocks, and half the paladins on the live side.

Just put everyone else on the dead side.

We generally have 18 on the Live side and 22 on the Dead side.

Nurru · 10/20/06, 5:00 PM

Our strategy is fairly straightforward on living side, I admittedly have entirely no idea what happens on dead side. It works fine with 4-5 Mages and 5 Priests, but a lot of our dps is also supplemented by the fact that we bring 4-5 Warlocks to nearly every raid.

We have a mage (Frost, since we have 2 frost mages in guild) at each Deathknight spawn. When a Deathknight spawns it is novaed as it appears and then is hit with CoC to slow it. From there a priest chain shackles it as we kill it so it cannot charge. For the first three waves of Deathknights and trainees we have our caster dps split between the left and right spawns with priests. After the third spawn the Mages move over to the left side and all Deathknights on that side are still killed. From that point on all right side Deathknights are shackled by one of the five priests. Trainees that spawn after that first Rider are feared by the 3-5 Warlocks we have and killed by dots. Mages each have 1 trainee in the rotation that they know to poly on spawn. With this strategy and 5 priests it means the last Deathknight on the left side won't have anyone to shackle it so for that one we use hammer of justice, intercept and careful frost novas to keep him from charging anyone.

Oh, and we have 1 Warrior on Live side. The rest I assume are all running around like crazies on Dead side.

♦ Praetorian · 10/20/06, 5:00 PM

Originally Posted by inveratulo

Originally Posted by Praetorian

... (Fun fact: The designer who made Gothik and 4H also made my least favorite fight in the zone. Go figure.)

and that would be ... grobb? gluth?

Loatheb. (Actually the same designer did Grobbulus too, but I actually like Grobbulus -- it's a fun fight and I like the concept. It's just too easy.) I just can't wrap my head around how the same person produces the ultimate "skill > consumables" fight and then turns around and makes a "deposit gold for epics" moneysink. :(

Edit: (BTW, to ward off any conspiracy theories, my knowledge about who designed what, etc., comes from interaction with devs on the Naxx PTR.)

♦ Praetorian · 10/20/06, 5:04 PM

Originally Posted by Nurru

With this strategy and 5 priests it means the last Deathknight on the left side won't have anyone to shackle it so for that one we use hammer of justice, intercept and careful frost novas to keep him from charging anyone.

Yeah, this is the part I don't like about 5 priests.

On liveside, we kill the 1:00 and 1:25 DK pairs, and then shackle the right DK at 1:50, 2:15, 2:40, and 3:05, while nova'ing/killing the left DK with a priest whose job is, as you noted, to chain-shackle everything on the left while it dies. At 3:30, which is the final wave, we then shackle both left and right spawns, and just burn the last Rider down. We could rely on Nova to keep one of the DKs controlled until the Rider goes down, but I'd prefer not to. Fortunately we have lots of high-attendance priests so I don't think I've ever actually had to seriously try this fight without six. I also like the fact that after 3:05, we do not kill any more DKs, which helps deadside catch up if they've fallen behind at all, since you can offtank horses and kill trainees quickly, but you can't afford to keep Spectral Deathknights alive because of their abilities, which can be problematic if you have both DKs and trainees to deal with.

Drauk · 10/20/06, 5:07 PM

How did you found about designer ? Insider in Blizzard :) ?

Nurru · 10/20/06, 5:07 PM

The frost novas on that DK are more of a last ditch effort to stop them, two Paladins are usually enough to hold him in place. The risks of breaking CC with those novas are too high. I could definitely see wanting more priests or reworking the strategy without being able to use HoJ.

♦ Praetorian · 10/20/06, 5:12 PM

Originally Posted by Drauk

How did you found about designer ? Insider in Blizzard :) ?

From above:

Edit: (BTW, to ward off any conspiracy theories, my knowledge about who designed what, etc., comes from interaction with devs on the Naxx PTR.)

As we were messing around with Patchwerk on the PTR, the designer was watching and asked if we'd help him test the other encounters he'd designed. I'm trying to recall which other bosses had designers in common -- IIRC Faerlina and Noth were done by the same person. I think.