Note that if you want to show that she is randomly picking between the first two we should be seeing something statistically equivalent to half #1 and half #2. If what we're seeing is mostly #1 with some #2 it's unlikely that she is just randomly choosing from the first two.
I added seven new videos to my original list. With those added and with tossing out the uncertain ones that gives 8/11 for first threat to second threat. If we assume this to a coin flip 50/50 chance between the first and the second on threat then the data should fall within a standard deviation of about 4. So statistically we can't rule out it being an even split between them.
I'll try to get a fraps set up of my on testing after this coming weeks attempts. I've yet to see a video where someone other than the first two on threat was chosen (not including tanks of course). If someone finds one do share.
On a side note, I think one of the problems people have with remembering, or figuring out where people are on threat during actual fights, ie not from rewatching a video, after the debuff goes out is because the debuff stops the person from causing threat. So within a few seconds they are usually completely off the meter.
Leaving aside how stupid it is to have the 2nd bite phase and the fear align, I'm interested in any useful ideas here.
We use assigned positions during the Blood Whirl, and as soon as BQL runs towards the center of the room everyone in the raid should be moving to those positions if they aren't already there in preparation for the fear. If the first bite in the raid is a ranged dps, then they bite a melee next, and vice versa, to minimize raid movement later on. We do not delay bites for even a second, and it works out perfectly for max raid dps and minimal risk during Bloodbolt Whirls. You can further maximize dps by having the bite victims run to the vampires, instead of making vampires run.
Fear ward the first two people bitten if they don't have personal fear immunities, and assign them to bite targets who are positioned nearby during Bloodbolt Whirl. If the 1:15 bite was done on time, then the 2:15 bites will happen just as the raid gets feared, and there will be plenty of time to spread back out. Healers should also pay attention to which two people are getting bitten and just throw an extra hot or shield on them.
There is really no reason to delay the first bite.
I was a bit curious to find out for myself how she chooses her bite targets, but watching videos or trying to keep my eye on three different meters at a specific second of the fight wasn't exactly ideal for me. So, what I did was wrote a mod to watch for me.
What this does is it starts recording combat log events when you enter combat with Lana'thel, then when she bites someone, it prints out who was bitten, the threat list, damage list, and healing list. It's a very simple mod, and the screenshot will describe what it does better than I really could. In general, it'll only print 1-2 entries after the bite target for each category, to try to reduce a bit of the chat window spam. A "(BM)" tag next to a name means that person had the blood mirror debuff at some point before the first bite.
I tested this over a handful of attempts tonight, and I think I got all the bugs worked out. I noticed some trends in who she bites, but I don't think I have enough of a sample size to really say for sure I know how it works. Hopefully this mod will make things a bit easier, though.
Originally Posted by ebbv
I like to arrange gingerbread men like they're running away from me in terror and then crush them all.
After killing her in second week 25man I want to make a few observations that might help.
1) Synch of 1st fear and bite seems to be avoided quite easy for us when delaying the 1st bite until the last 2seconds of thirst. We also FW the 2 vampires and the melee vampire bites a warrior that breaks fear.
I read some suggestions here about delaying the 2nd also but we never needed it and keep in mind that each delay will translate in delay in all the following transitions 2->4, 4->8 and 8->16 potentially costing a lot of RDPS.
2) Death in air phase. The usual cause for us was people running instead of avoiding to move over the minimum needed to keep 6y spread. Once we insisted on range on one S size, melee on N healers in middle things looked ok. When spread is good I have never seen a death. Tips:
- Delay 1st bite so vampire can wait for end of bolts and then run bite
- Educate DPS so the melee do not clutter after her when she flies so they are not caught 10 in middle and range to move back to hug walls to leave place
- If you have protection paladin tank he can heal during this phase
- There is no better time to use your HS
3) Bite mechanic has got a lot of attention we ToT a rogue on start to top agro (just under MT) and usually he gets bitten and if not it is a hunter and we make sure to have 1 rogue 1 hunter at 1:15 and then spread buff rogue to melee and hunter to range. This was mentioned by someone in the thread already but it worked for us great also.
There are two things that I have noticed related to the bite mechanics and can cause an MC leading to a wipe.
- If you are close to the target you intend to bite the range indicator might change from red to white but you are still to far to bite. Solution is to get closer but personally I got controlled 2 times in first tries until I noticed the issue.
- If you are a rogue and try to vanish the first fear and the thirst for blood just hits then switch to stealth bars from vanish -> bar change due to thirst -> switch to normal bars when out of stealth can cause you to loose the "vampiric bite" that will be left on stealth bar.
On an unrelated note, we pretty much blew up every time during the fear. Leaving aside how stupid it is to have the 2nd bite phase and the fear align, I'm interested in any useful ideas here. Yes, we tried to delay the first bite and allow for time to the biters and bite targets to be broken from the fear or have it end. That certainly helped to unalign them a bit. Enough? Hard to say, so many others died at that point it was getting silly.
Since you're alliance, you should have some humans around and they can easily break the fear. We fear ward the two biters and the two to be bitten are both human or someone with a fear immunity. The real problem is, however, the need to be close together to bite. You basically have to bite during the fear before she starts bombarding the raid with tons of AoE damage. On more than one occasion we have lost two vampires (one recently bitten) to this up to the point where it feels like playing the RNG game.
It is my understanding you can actually bite people through immunities like bubbles and iceblock, so maybe this allows for some options but just the idea sounds way too complicated for my liking. We also found out that if you're trying to bite someone near the boss and you happen to be out of the bite's TINY range, you will auto-target the boss and are forced to manually retarget your intended target and try again. This is especially annoying when the boss is being repositioned because of shadowflames on a melee. The bite really could do with more than 1 yard range
Fear warding can help but doesn't always offer enough protection as even if you aren't feared you can't afford to be close to anyone when she casts Bloodbolt Whirl. The timing of the first bite is somewhat random meaning that the synchronization of bites/fears differs a bit.
In general, on 25-man the only risky bite is the 2nd one that coincides with the first fear. If you bite right away you will usually be able to do the 2nd bites either just before the fear casts or right after but still before the whirl. If you delay it the maximum length, you should be able to wait out the whirl and still have a few seconds left on your debuff to bite someone. This is potentially a dps loss but whichever one works for you should be fine. On 10-man the Essence of the Blood Queen debuff lasts 15 seconds longer and this fear shouldn't be at the same time as any bite. However, here the 2nd fear can coincide with a bite. The easiest way to avoid that seems to be to delay the first bites a bit, but I don't have a great load of experience with it.
Pre-patch, you could get your 3rd bites off before the fear occurred. Now, you absolutely cannot do so. This means a strategy change for many guilds and a slight DPS loss for even more.
Holding the first bite for 8 seconds allowed us to skip the bite/air phase interaction but, as I said above, it's a DPS loss.
After a bit more testing tonight, it appears the bite is going to the person nearest on threat to the current Blood Mirror target that is not the tank. (it seems as though its an absolute value, as it can be the person above or below them).
We were running into trouble getting a consistent bite target while playing with the Shadowmourne quest due to the "second tank's" rage generation. Our normal bite target was consistently 2nd on threat, but he'd only get bit on the attempts when the Blood Mirror was right under or above him. When the druid was lower, it was going to (seemingly) random people, including myself on the kill.
After a bit more testing tonight, it appears the bite is going to the person nearest on threat to the current Blood Mirror target that is not the tank. (it seems as though its an absolute value, as it can be the person above or below them).
We were running into trouble getting a consistent bite target while playing with the Shadowmourne quest due to the "second tank's" rage generation. Our normal bite target was consistently 2nd on threat, but he'd only get bit on the attempts when the Blood Mirror was right under or above him. When the druid was lower, it was going to (seemingly) random people, including myself on the kill.
Sorry, but this isn't it.
Since I am the raid leader, I've chosen to OT this fight (meaning that I am the blood mirror). On Tuesday, I specced into a holy/prot hybrid spec (since the blood mirror damage absolutely cannot be mitigated). I spent the entire fight spamming heals on anyone within range. I was nowhere near any of the high threat targets when the bite went out. I'd go as far as to say that I was far under the healers, as well. Regardless, it went to one of our two mages (the only people actively DPSing until the bite went out) who were several positions ahead of me. If your hypothesis were correct, healers would have been being bitten.
So, to recap: Holy/prot blood mirror spamming heals. Threat was nowhere near that of the bite targets. Hypothesis disproven.
That does seem to refute it. Was it consistently going to the highest threat mage of the two? I'm curious if you were actually LAST on threat, circumventing the whole mechanic, perhaps making it go to baseing off the MT. Also, are you attacking BQ at all as the "healer tank"
The reason I feel it is linked to the Blood Mirror target is based on our experience in both weeks. When we had a consistent Blood Mirror, (no switching for Shadowmourne), it always went to the highest threat person that wasn't tanking/BM.
When he had to alternate Blood Mirrors, everything changed. Our "normal" bite target's threat didn't change, he was (still) consistently at the top of the threat meters, the Blood Mirror's threat did, however. When he was able to climb back to 2nd on threat, the bites went normally, when he wasn't, it was going to people who'd never been bit.
For anyone using my mod (ICC Crimson Halls - Blood Queen Lana'thel (Normal)), I apparently forgot to include the spell ID for the 25 man version of Essence of the Blood Queen, which made the mod do nothing in 25 man. The updated version is attached.
Originally Posted by ebbv
I like to arrange gingerbread men like they're running away from me in terror and then crush them all.
That does seem to refute it. Was it consistently going to the highest threat mage of the two? I'm curious if you were actually LAST on threat, circumventing the whole mechanic, perhaps making it go to baseing off the MT. Also, are you attacking BQ at all as the "healer tank"
The reason I feel it is linked to the Blood Mirror target is based on our experience in both weeks. When we had a consistent Blood Mirror, (no switching for Shadowmourne), it always went to the highest threat person that wasn't tanking/BM.
When he had to alternate Blood Mirrors, everything changed. Our "normal" bite target's threat didn't change, he was (still) consistently at the top of the threat meters, the Blood Mirror's threat did, however. When he was able to climb back to 2nd on threat, the bites went normally, when he wasn't, it was going to people who'd never been bit.
I would start the fight by judging the boss. It's safe to assume that I was probably the second or third person to hit the boss on our 5 pulls.
I am not sure which of the two mages were selected relative to the threat list, just that they were both directly under the main tank (in other words, they occupied the #2 and #3 threat spots).
We did instruct players to not DPS until the bite had gone out. Some players ignored this, especially our two rogues and our hunter. Assuming that we had players that followed my instructions not to DPS, I would certainly have been above them on the threat list (and I should have had RF on as well, giving my heals a little extra threat).
We did World of Logs it, if that helps. If nothing else, it should show any DPS that would've held off until the bite went out. World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis
Edit: I parsed our kill attempt to find out who was not attacking until the bite. I found two players (Stakk and Fayme) that sat there and waited until the bite went out. These players were, without a doubt, below me on the threat list.
I've had something nibbling at my mind for some time, and doing some research I couldn't find immediate disproof. Specifically regarding prioritizing Hunters highly for bite targets. I've tried mods designed by folks in this thread for this fight and they have placed Hunters high on priority (this can be manually altered, of course). The reasoning given is because Hunters are showing in top slots on WoL.
It's a fact that the first bite victim should out DPS anyone else in the raid simply by dint of having the + damage debuff for more time. It's debatable that the first bite issues to highest threat (unmodified by Tricks or MD), but I lean in this direction (I've started driving the bite to myself by using Righteous Fury, which removes the threat reduction from my talents when active - more on why at the end before complaints that a Ret shouldn't be a first victim). Hunters are often bitten first, as they have no threat reduction talents - they generate at 100% threat then can wipe this via FD.
Hunter bitten first = more debuff duration = more damage = shows higher on logs. This does not mean that victims 2+ if Hunter should surpass some other class that could have been bitten instead. No offense to our Hunter friends, but a good 10% of their DPS is the pet (% grows if BM for some reason), which will not be modified by this buff. Therefore they're at 190% ((90% * 2) + 10%) rather than 200% increase. If many raids are biting Hunters 2nd, this perpetuates a self-fullfilling prophecy of Hunters doing higher damage.
I would think that Hunters and any Warlocks whose pet isn't just standing for some buff purpose (and Unholy DK?) should be lower on any given bite priority. Any given guild should arrange priority based on their guild members DPS contributions sans pets (or modified downward by some degree where pets are involved). Is this unreasonable?
Sidenote regarding why I've been using RF - partially to test if I can intentionally drive target (80% certain, I've only recently begun trying and was worried regarding tank threat in those first few seconds), but mostly because it isn't picking our high DPS mages and I've managed a far higher sustained DPS under the bite than our Hunters. As raid leader I wouldn't be my own top preference for first target, but it's higher than who she is picking "naturally."
Rock: "We're sub-standard DPS. Nerf Paper, Scissors are fine."
Paper: "OMG, WTF, Scissors!"
Scissors: "Rock is OP and Paper are QQers. We need PvP buffs."
It's been a while, but I feel I should note that BQL's room coordinates have been fixed. Range checks now work fine.
Also, I am 100% convinced that the eligible players for first bite target will ALWAYS be the two highest players on threat that are not actively tanking the boss or have blood mirror. This is the exact behavior I have seen for weeks, and our first bite is only ever different if someone is not paying attention and out-threats our two designated targets. Again, 100% convinced. Note that mages still appear on the threat list (greyed out) if their mirror images are in use.
02/02/10, 2:04 AM
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