My guild is having an issue that seems luck-based (and causing a wipe), so we have to think that there is probably a better solution.

We have our raid split up on both sides of the dragon, half and half. The issue arises in the up phase, when he icebolts random people. On rare occasions (statistically, it is 2.36%), he chooses all 5 Icebolts for one side of the room, and well, the other side gets toasted (or frozen as the case may be).

Is there a way to combat this with either:

1). Finding a way to make him icebolt certain people or,

2). Adjust the raid in the middle of the madness for closer access to icebolts, even if they end up on the other side of the room?

We just can't seem to find a way that ensures success in this phase without putting a good portion of the raid in danger of either his cleave (being in front) or tail whip (being in back).

So wipe and go again and not likely to have it happen again.

Also where did you get 2.36%, seems to be 3.125% (0.5^5).

If you actually last for 15 minutes should only occurs ~25% of the time (about 9 flights in 15 minutes).

It's not a 50% chance of landing on one side every time, because there is 1 less raider to choose from for the Icebolt.

(20/40) * (19/39) * (18/38) * (17/37) * (16/36) = 2.36%

Gradual movement towards the 1st ice block helps with this alot

The problem is clumpage. The splash damage can result in deaths if the entire raid goes toward the first one to drop. Now, we've only worked on this 3-4 days, so I don't pretend to be the authority. However, some elaboration of this suggestion would help a lot.

Assuming that you have people in each group spreading out both close and far away from the boss here.

The people that are closest to the 1st Ice Block need to group around the ice block asap and make room for the raid. After that the groups to their left and right make the same gradual movements and so on. Most importantly is when you are doing these movements is to stay spread out safely. Move the raid under the assumption that everyone needs to get behind the 1st block. If there happens to be a block that is closer on your way then great but don't rely on it.

Don't clump then, just move towards it :) There's enough room to be safe and still close. If you start running right after the emote you can run a quarter possibly, meaning you have half the room in the beginning.

That 2.36% is the number that you won't have an iceblock 90 degrees to your right and left given you dont move at all. If you can move 30 degrees to your left or right, which is barely 5 steps, chances you wont get an iceblock closer to you among the remaining 4 is 0.68%, which is pretty forgiving, and still giving you at least 4-5 seconds before the icebolts are fired.

Don't limit yourself to right or left; if the opposite side has an iceblock close to the head or tail, just move; sapphiron landing is a good 15 sec time span, its a pretty big dragon; you will have time to run back.

3 weeks running we've had all 5 on one side. The chance of it happening once is really, really low.

When we first hit Sapph this was our problem too. What we ended up doing was using the 10 to 2 o clock positions during stage 2. You can even try as close together as 11 to 1 o clock and just only use the very very top half of the room.

It seems to me that this only happens when people on the periphery are hit.

Actually that's not correct either. The correct probability is 1*(19/39)*(18/38)*(17/37)*(16/36)=4.7% since it doesn't matter which side the first bolt lands on.

its actually not that low.
if you split up with 20 ppl on each side, chances that all iceblocks are on 1 side are 19/39*18/38*17/37*16/36. thats 4.7% every time he goes airborne, i'd guess usually killing time is between 7 and 9 airbornes, giving you a way too high chance to have all blocks on one side to ignore it.
we still split up in 2 camps of 20 people and during airborne we spread out in one half of the room, ignoring the other half. when 3rd block lands on the same side, people start running. works ok for us. if you wanna use world buffs, hakkar buff or swiftness of zanza make that much easier, but its not really necessairy if people pay attention.

we've determined empirically that any time we have world buffs for sapphiron, he'll hit one side of the room with all five ice blocks.

just saying.

Saturday alone we had 3 attempts where all 5 icebolts were on one side, it always seems our cleanest attempts end this way (or 1 off in a silly corner that was caused by someone was being stupid). It's sad when Sapph is at 40% 5 minutes into the fight and there's only 1 death, to have 20 people die in one phase 2. Even if the probability of all bolts on one side is 2-5%, it's still high enough that it happens and rapes your face when you need not to.

Assuming you need 8 air-phases to kill.

20/40*19/39*18/38*17/37*16/36 = 2.36%

(1-0.0236)^8 = 82.6%

So its a 17.4% chance you will get raped by 5 blocks on one side. Sounds like its best to find a strategy that can deal with this occurance.

edit: a bit wrong, read next post.

No. Twice.
1*19/39*18/38*17/37*16/36 =0.0471, or almost 5%
(1-0.0471)^8 = 0.67966

That a 67.966% chance of Not getting all 5 on one side after 8 runs.
Or another way, a 32.03% chance you are screwed.

Correct, it's a 2.36% chance to have 5 on one particular side, but double that to have 5 on the same side, regardless of which side that may be. What you're really calculating is the odds that the last four bolts hit on the same side as the first.

And yes, we went two full days of attempts without seeing this happen once, which made me think that somehow it might not even be possible (maybe there was a pattern to his bolts based on group #?), but once I saw it once, we changed our phase 2 positioning. Rolling the dice like that on a boss is never an acceptable option to me.

How did you adjust, Gurg? Did you guys go for 10-2 type positioning in phase 2? I agree that rolling the dice isn't really a good idea, and we need to account for this occurence in our strategy.

Thanks in advance!

Basically, yeah. We're N/S when he's on the ground, but drift west to NW/SW positions when he takes off. And after 10-15 seconds or so, if people don't have one near them, they start moving towards a visible one. The other advantage of doing this is that by standing in a different region when he is in the air vs. when he's on the ground, you don't generally have to deal with lingering Blizzards and can have much more regimented positioning.

Yea ofc, sry ^_^ I was just a bit blinded by the OPs number.

After the first two ice blocks hit, if neither of them are on your side, start moving to the closest ice block. Proximity to other players should not really be that big of a problem if you are conscious of other players location on your way over there. Getting the run speed enchant on an old pair of boots have enabled me to reach more than one ice block "just in time". Basically, just recognize that reaching the ice blocks is the most important job you have on an individual level in the air phase. If that means you have to haul ass across the map to guarantee you get to an ice block in time, do it.

A little off topic of 5icebolts on a single side, but after a few hours of Sapphiron today, I was wondering how people decided to do healing?

We normally field around 5-6 priests, and after todays attempts it seems as if we were almost required to have more. Shaman and or Druids could simply not keep their own group up. Our DPS is all 240+ with plenty in the 280-315 range.

I was wondering if it was common for guilds to field 7-8 priests? (similiar to fielding 8war for 4HM I suppose). Has anyone had any luck with using 5 or less?