I've found a few Heigan strategy threads and discussion about lag, but I haven't been able to find much material on the supression room itself.
We've been to Heigan 3 or 4 nights now, but we can't seem to perfect a strategy to get everyone to Heigan alive. Currently what we've found works best for us is:
Sit in Noth's room and have a hunter pull out the bat packs one at a time, OT 1 bat of each pack in a corner, kill the grubs as they come, and try to as quickly as possible pull 3 of the plague beasts. Whenever we've tried to pull the 4th beast we can't seem to get just him or just him and a bat pack or so. We have always gotten the beast + 2 bat packs + 4-6 grubs which is just to much for us to handle at once.
What we end up doing after the point of pulling everything until the 3rd beast is down is we enter the room and head up to the right side corner turn before heigan's room. From there we kill the OT'd bats as they can respawn safely now since we are past them. But at that point in that corner of the room it becomes difficult to OT new bat packs and pull the beast simply because there isn't much space to work with and we end up generally with endless spawns of bats and grubs (just now this moment thought, would it be feasible to OT 1 grub in each grub pack? we might be able to pull out the 4th beast if this would work since he wouldn't come with a crap load of grubs)
This is a pic of the "path" we take once 3 beasts are dead and we head into the room to get at the 4th beast and kill the current OT'd bats. We don't move much further than that because the beast then aggro's along with a few grubs and 2 bat packs. We generally sit there with endless spawns of bats until the beast is in a good position to pull just him without adds and well, it gets rather rough at this point.
We have also tried moving the raid progressively through the room as we kill things but that typically ended with a beast accidently aggro'ing the raid while dealing with something else and not being brought out of the raid fast enough (and if you could, I think we'd just end up aggro'ing more junk).
If we could get to heigan reliably and fairly quickly I'm pretty sure he would die in a short time, but this suppression room is really just annoying us to the point of wanting to find the developer that designed this and take a automatic rifle to his nuts.
We've got to be missing something here, any insight or assistance would be welcomed. I'm rather suprised at the complete lack of any discussion anywhere on this subject. Makes us feel like we're the only guild that is having issues with this god forsaken room but I know that can't be the case :) heh.
We have also tried moving the raid progressively through the room as we kill things but that typically ended with a beast accidently aggro'ing the raid while dealing with something else and not being brought out of the raid fast enough (and if you could, I think we'd just end up aggro'ing more junk).
Just do that.
Follow your path, set 5 points to stop at and 'clear up' the bats. Keep clearing them at those points till you have a plague beast in range, pull and kill plague beast. Move to next spot.
The trick is killing and moving swiftly. Stay in one place too long and people start to go oom etc, which is BAD.
We just zerg through it pretyy much. We have 4 points we stop at (was 5 when we were learning it) and a tank/hunter that stay ahead of the pack to intercept the plague beasts. If alliance designate pally aoe tanks to hold lots of agro and have all your melee compete in the 'who can make friends with the most bats' game ;)
There are stopping points where you will only pull one pack of respawning mobs every 15-20 seconds. Learn where these are, and stop at them. If people are dead, you can res them. If people died too far back, they can run and you can summon them. If people D/C, let them stay that way.
The final stopping point is after the mushroom around the corner. Use the OOC time to equip your Runes of the Dawn. :)
My guild progressively pulls through the room. We have a hunter who pulls the packs and places and icon on one which is pulled to our OT or something close to that extent. Since a bat in each group we pass is being OT nothing behind us respawns except for grubs and plague beasts. We move fast enough that we dont get multiple spawns of plaguebeasts and as long as noobs aren't AoEing we don't have any respawning bats. Also we use a MA to FF individual bats for noobs who can't help but target icon'd mobs. Once we turn the corner where the mushroom is we just stand there till we kill the final plaguebeast and grubs and rush into Heigans room.
I don't know what you are doing wrong when it comes to the fourth plague beast, but we are able to pull the entire room into Noth's room without ever grabbing a double bat pack. We also have the off-tank holding one bat from every pack. After pulling every bat pack and plague beast, we go through the suppression room, pause at the giant mushroom to kill all the maggots, then kill everything at the final corner just before engaging Heigen.
Our strat is to pull bat and grub packs out, keep one from each alive. Mark them with a raid icon and tell people not to attack any marked targets. Kill the first 2 plague beasts, then move the raid into the room, along the first wall till you get the 3rd plague beast. Move around the corner. At this point, you can kill all the marked bats and grubs that you've kept from the start of the room. Now kill the 4th plague beast and move to the final corner just before Heigan's room. At this point if you need to rez/summon/drink you can kill the grubs/bats that will spawn almost on top of you and you'll get 10-15 sec of out of combat time to do so.
Our strat is to pull bat and grub packs out, keep one from each alive. Mark them with a raid icon and tell people not to attack any marked targets. Kill the first 2 plague beasts, then move the raid into the room, along the first wall till you get the 3rd plague beast. Move around the corner. At this point, you can kill all the marked bats and grubs that you've kept from the start of the room. Now kill the 4th plague beast and move to the final corner just before Heigan's room. At this point if you need to rez/summon/drink you can kill the grubs/bats that will spawn almost on top of you and you'll get 10-15 sec of out of combat time to do so.
As I mentioned in my post above I just had this idea like while I was writing this, of OT'ing the grubs. I think we'll try it since it conforms to the strategy we're most comfortable with right now, but I have no idea how hard 4-5 grubs will hit attacking 1 person. We'll find out next time we're there I suppose.
Its not bad at all Apparation. I set up my guild's healing schemes for all the fights, and for the Heigan room I use 2 tanks on the Bats/Grubs and just assign 2 druids to them. They keep them up just fine.
Anyway, what we do is offtank four things at once. Marked mobs stay alive, everything else dies. As we move forward I'll keep cycling through four marks (star/circle/diamond/triangle), thereby unmarking the previously-marked mob and letting it die, since we've advanced past its spawn point. Then, like everyone, we stop on the righthand wall before Heigan's room, kill everything, drink up, make sure everyone is buffed, etc., then kill the last packs before Heigan one last time and charge in.
I think one important point to note, regardless of the underlying strategy, is the bats and grubs only hurt if they focus fire on a single raid member. (Hey, the mobs need to learn to assist too!) We've found that aoeing to control floods of bats on a bad beast pull or respawn usually leads to the situation going even further out of control when the casters start dropping.
If a whole flock aggros for whatever reason, it's best to remain calm, let people kill stuff one by one. Our healers use extremely small heals here, and if any one healer pulls aggro, he doesn't heal himself - other people patch him up. As long as the bats/grubs don't focus fire, a swarm of 15 can come and no one dies still.
Naturally, plague beasts AEing the raid is the fastest way to a messy wipe. There are four beasts total to be killed, with a potential rush of 2 of them simultaneously right after the corner if movement is mistimed.
Anyway, what we do is offtank four things at once. Marked mobs stay alive, everything else dies. As we move forward I'll keep cycling through four marks (star/circle/diamond/triangle), thereby unmarking the previously-marked mob and letting it die, since we've advanced past its spawn point. Then, like everyone, we stop on the righthand wall before Heigan's room, kill everything, drink up, make sure everyone is buffed, etc., then kill the last packs before Heigan one last time and charge in.
Exactly what we do.
People trying this for the first time need to get the cadence of the final few seconds down, or you'll risk ruining your attempt. We actually offtank a single bat after everyone drinks, then pull the two grubs and kill them exactly simultaneously, just to give as large a window as possible for slow/afk people.
It's probably good for new people to know--the gate closes concurrently with the first splash, 15 seconds after aggro. If someone is stuck outside, tell them to try to hearth.
There are stopping points where you will only pull one pack of respawning mobs every 15-20 seconds. Learn where these are, and stop at them. If people are dead, you can res them. If people died too far back, they can run and you can summon them. If people D/C, let them stay that way.
The final stopping point is after the mushroom around the corner. Use the OOC time to equip your Runes of the Dawn. :)
Exactly (respawning mobs = 1 group of bats). We have 3-4 spots where we stop and kill beasts, but the grubs/bats are extremely easy to deal with as alliance. One pallie spams consecration while mages aoe the stuff to death, with warriors grabbing whatever they can get. Just figure out the good spots (takes a couple days) and then it becomes easy mode. Hint, the middle of the room is not a good spot.
I've done it multiple ways, so you can take or leave my advice:
Easiest way to do this clear the room prior to Heigan is to offtank the entire way up. It makes the entire clear absolutely controlled, and roughly 8 minutes every time. Incidently it appears EJ does it the same way. Just follow the inside path and keep the warriors behind the raid. This room isn't even an issue anymore for us - which is good, cause I hate trash!
Expansion: For those who haven't done this, if you pull a grub or bat, and offtank one of them to the side, and kill the rest... that pack will never respawn until the final mob dies.
What this means is you can offtank a single bat or grub all the way to the next "safe point", then kill it to free up that tank. The healing is trivial, the movements are trivial... the only tough point is potential burst on mages, but thats not a problem either.
OOC is not necessary unless someone gets hearthed or dies.
We actually offtank in Noth's room until all 4 beasts have been pulled and killed. It works for us, although it's pretty brutal on your OT's armor. Once the 4th beast is pulled and killed, we drag the whole pack up through to the mushroom killing grubs on the move, grab the last couple packs, then burn everything down and go kill Heigan.
It works for us.
Melador> Incidentally, these last few pages are why people hate lawyers.
Viator> I really don't want to go all Kalman here.
Bury> Just imagine what the world would be like if you used your powers for good.
We stick to the left wall, and enter heigan's room by left wall; after pulling the first 2 beasts into noth's room. 1 Break at the pool, 1 break at the second corner, 1 break right before heigan, regen, and run in.
One of our warlocks start the aoe a few secs before, other warlocks/mages don't require much healing, if any; works good.
In the past I wondered how many guilds actually burned their way through the tunnel rather than using the offtanking trick. I suppose the answer is 'not many'.
We just ae plow through it, and always have. It seems like avoiding the mechanic of the gauntlet offtanking, but thats me. We do pull the first Plague Beast into Noth's room and kill it, not that it's necessary. All in all it takes us no more than 4 minutes to clear.
We don't off tank. It takes us maybe 5 min to get right outside of Hegian's room (staging area). Never have any problems, maybe alliance is just easier this way :/
Anyway, what we do is offtank four things at once. Marked mobs stay alive, everything else dies. As we move forward I'll keep cycling through four marks (star/circle/diamond/triangle), thereby unmarking the previously-marked mob and letting it die, since we've advanced past its spawn point. Then, like everyone, we stop on the righthand wall before Heigan's room, kill everything, drink up, make sure everyone is buffed, etc., then kill the last packs before Heigan one last time and charge in.
This is pretty much what we do too. The only difference is that instead of using the path that is in the OP's picture, we hug the right wall the whole way around. There is a tree that gets in your way but you can go around the outside of it without prox aggroing anything.
Yes, I was also actually surprised to see how many people are offtanking to avoid respawns. We take the same line that the OP posted in his image. Kill the first beast in Noth's room, kill the 2nd and 3rd along the first wall on the right. After we move past the mushroom then kill the 4th. We wait there just killing one bat pack at a time until we make sure everyone is buffed and has near full mana. To run into the room, we pull the last two grubs and run in as soon as they are dead.
At times, our mages get a little overanxious and aoe too quickly, but we always have enough time to res and drink up in between pulls. For the beasts while in the room, the hunter and warrior are well ahead of the raid to meet them. Whenever we pull way to much, we just have a warrior use challenging shout, and do that type of rotation. And it once again comes down to mages and warlocks taking it a bit slower so as to not pull too much aggro. Paladins BOP is always a nice lifesaver though for those unfortunate accidents.
We use four stop points, and are often able to skip at least one of the middle Plague Beasts. The rest are held right near the raid and DPS'd down when the bats are dead. If nobody is dead and we just killed all the bats, we move to the next spot. Ideally, we can be in the last position in just a couple of minutes. Advantages include the ability to rez/drink/summon anywhere along our path. It is also fairly easy to learn for new players.
For what it's worth, we picked up a new player that had previously done it by marking and dragging adds, and felt like ours was much simpler, and liked it more. Other than that, I couldn't really say which one is better. We've done it our way for a while, it works, and we're comfortable with it, and I'm sure people that mark and drag feel the same.
I was just wondering if the Off tanking one bat in each group was still an option. I had heard that it was possibly fixed and the packs respawn now but am unsure.
10/31/06, 11:25 AM
