ICC Crimson Halls - Blood Queen Lana'thel (Normal)
 

My take on Lana'thel is from the point of view of a 10 men strict player and thus some issues we had in our tries definitely won't be the same for 25 men player.

1. Berserk / Soft Enrage

We had some problems hitting the soft enrage and berserk timers due to a half-assed raid and the requirement of three healers. We used the gimmick of letting the second vampire die to buy us some time to hit the berserk timer, the DPS requirement being far too brutal without it. If you want to use it, don't bite an Affliction warlock, as long as they have Corruption on the boss they won't die, even standing in flames spamming Life Tap.

2. Threat

We discovered that Lana'thel bites the third player in her threat table the harsh way: after the first few attempts we lost some due to me (restoration druid) being bitten first. In the first seconds of the fight, when there isn't a lot of vampires, I have to blanket the raid with Rejuvenation (and the [Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation]) and manage to have sub-25% overhealing. Vigilance and Hand of Salvation weren't enough to cover for that and we had to use a warlock securing the third place on her threat table with Searing Pain.

Suiciding a vampire so that you extend the soft enrage to the hard enrage time no longer works after the hotfix to increase the duration of the Essence.

For 25 man at least the apparently optimal path is now 1-2-4-8-16 where after 16 you have ~1 min to kill her before the hard enrage and then shortly after the MCs.

As for who gets bitten first it always seems to be our highest threat (besides the tank) though each time I looked it also corresponded to the highest damage at that point and possibly even the first person to hit her. It never looked like it was the third agro target though, at least not on 25 man.

From what I saw tonight (only 3 attempts) it was the 3rd person on aggro. The threat table was always Tank/rogue/hunter.

Our hunter said that he could always get it as long as he didn't have to MD, and he got it everytime in ~5 10 man attempts and 3 25 man attempts.

In our attempts, she almost always bit one hunter, and only on two occasions someone else (another hunter and a mage). As far as I know, the Hunter who was bitten always misdirected to the tank, so I doubt position on the threat table plays a role in who she chooses to bite. Highest damage done in the first x seconds seems far more likely, as hunters do a lot of front loaded damage before the melees are even in range of her.

I don't think it's related to highest damage done within X seconds as during our attempts on Wednesday we had a Holy Paladin being bitten first twice out of 8 attempts. She was running with Righteous Fury up which coupled with high Holy Light crits could result in jumping up to 3rd on aggro (only one mob so no threat split).

On 4 out of 5 attempts last night we had the same Hunter being bitten first.

The first post says that he got picked as a resto druid. I also witness a resto druid in our first 10 man attempt get it.

On 25 man i can testify that she bites the second on aggro, not the third.

We had an hunter misdirection to our top dpser to ensure he would get bitten first.

Sorry, must have missed that... also, looks like the hunter in question didn't misdirect after all (though he was told to), so highest threat after the tank seems the likely targetting mechanism for the first bite. Again, sorry for the misinformation.

I had old versions of charts indicating bite order for 10 and 25 man as well as the alternate (and then optimal) strategies using a sacrificed player. Now that is entirely unnecessary and I've updated the charts to reflect it coinciding perfectly with the 5:15 enrage timer.






In regards to the first bite mechanic, we tried several things to try and figure out the order. According to our experiences:

-It does not seem to be the player that has done the most damage by the 15 second mark.
Reasoning: I was highest and the second or 3rd highest was bitten. During these times I was not Misdirecting to the tank to try to be second in threat which means I wasn't hitting Blood Queen for the first ~2 seconds of the pull.

-It does not seem to be first on threat after the tank.
Reasoning: We had the other DPS delay popping cooldowns for the first 15 seconds except for me, and I was second in threat at all times after the pull up to the bite and was not chosen.

-It -may- be the related to something about the first hit on Lana'thel, however I can not explain how healers would have been bitten first.
Reasoning: We did get our last 4 pulls of the night to all have me bitten first. On the 3-2-1 countdown I was Misdirecting the tank and landed my initial Serpent Sting at "2" on the countdown to be sure to be the first non-tanking player to land an offensive ability and initiate the pull (rather than proximity aggro of the incoming main tank).

My only explanation of why a healer was bitten would be do to possibly a Judgement landing first or possibly the tank actually getting hit by the first melee swing and then technically the first non-npc ability to register threat was a HoT or if a buff proc possibly registered. But regardless, I can't really come up with a satisfactory reasoning behind it.

Did you actually read the OP ? =D

Ver logically, the two tanks should be DPSing as much as they can and thus providing the first two slots on the threat table. Then most likely a DPS should follow, or a healer who is pushing as much HPS as s/he can (this is not desired).

Why should the 2nd tank be 2nd on the threat list?
He is tanking by proximity ... not by aggro. And all the raids using a warrior as an OT surely will confirm that said OT is nowhere near the top of the aggro table at any point of the encounter.

Anyway, from our experience we've ruled out the 2nd threat holder being the target of the first bite.
One rogue going all out (without using tricks) and getting an MD on top of that did not result in him being the first target. We even had a mage being bitten first who used his images on the pull.
In most of our tries it was a hunter or a mage. In very few cases it was a melee (I can remember only one ... where I intercepted early on the pull and had a deathwished crit streak + Taunka proc). So the first one to hit her (besides the tanks) seem the most plausible to me at the moment. That would not explain the resto druid being bitten first though.
Did he use fairy fire to debuff her on the pull?

Are you referring to 25man or 10man? because this is conflictual with what my experience is.
Over the six attempts we had yesterday @25man, we were always able to direct the first bite to whom we wanted to with misdirection, and it wasn't always the same person since we meddled around the consideration what would be more beneficial biting first between a ranged or a melee.

Hypothesis : Whoever is higher on threat that isn't either the tank nor the blood mirrored person.

Hypothesis two : second on threat for 25man, third for 10man?

So what exactly has changed with the hotfix?
We downed her yesterday before the hotfix was applied, so I cannot check for myself.

"Blood Queen Lana’thel's Essence has a longer duration."
Does that mean that you keep the debuff even on death? Then how is it handles with the bite phases? Are there still fixed bite phases (as in, you only have 50 seconds of DPS time)? What happens if a player with the debuff dies and gets resurrected?

// Edit
Ok, I actually misread the change. From the wording of it it seems to only last longer now, so what's the new time?



The most difficult thing for me on the encounter was biting a target when the shit hits the fan (e.g. the third target) and everything is chaotic. Sometimes the target I've chosen beforehand was in the middle because of the brain link, sometimes I simple couldn't find it because the melee camp is so terribly clumped up and the range of the bite is so ridiculously low, or sometimes simply another player bid my designated target and I stand there all fucked up, manically searching for another target not already bitten and not too far away.

Do you have any tips? Do you have a fixed bite order for every player?
Are there any addons that help with target aqcuisition? I suppose Grid might help here, but I'm not very eager to install Grid only for that.

I was bitten first on our yesterday attempt/kill in 10 man as an arcane mage with 40% threat reduction + vigilance. I was 5th on the agro table but first on damage done when I got bitten. Maybe it's based on the raw threat generated before any threat reducting talents or abilities?

This also seems plausible to me. We also had our Arcane Mage bit, as well as a rogue once that had up Trick of the Trade to for the first 10 seconds of the pull.

@Ciopio: I was referring to our experiences in 25 man, we didn't really get to experiment much with the mechanic in 10 man since we killed it on the second pull (however in both 10 man pulls it went to the Arcane Mage, although I was Misdirecting to the main tank and may not have been second on threat).