Consistant RazorGore kills

GROGtheNailer · 11/07/06, 11:27 AM

Good morning. Just wanted to bring up Razorgore and a consistant kill ratio week to week.

Currently our guild are on Twin Emps and into Naxx but we still do BWL one day a week ( have had BWL on farm for 6-7 months ). Now I don't know about other guilds but for us Razorgore has always been a pain in the ass. We typically either one shot him or it takes 3-4 tries...yet we one shot the rest of the bosses in BWL consistantly and Razorgore has always been a bit sketchy for us for some reason.

We used to to the kite method 4-5 months ago and switched to the DPS method back at that time, which makes for a funner fight and a more consistant fight ( we think) Still, it has never been as consistant as we like....until recently. We try for under a 5 hour clear so that we can spend the rest of the week on new content so consistancy is what were after.

Typically, we dps the corners, kill em all and sleep/kite dragons, 4-5 hunters kiting ( taking 6 dragons) and 4 druids sleeping one in their corner. I would control the orb and break the eggs plus sleep 2 dragons myself the whole fight. ( I mark 2 dragons with the raid icons - yellow and orange so no one will shoot or sleep my dragons) This works well but not as consistant as I liked.

For one, when breaking the eggs it can be a pain to also babysit two dragons which can slow down breaking the eggs...as we all know, managing the eggs as fast as possible should rule the day.

I discovered these forums a few weeks ago and noticed one thing we have never really done but which has made this fight more consistant and manageable, hell...easy really. Noticed a few of you bring this up.

Adding a few warlocks to manage some dragons. This makes one person per dragon plus takes me away from having to manage 2 dragons myself (as orb controller). I could of punched myself in the face when i realized how well this seemed to work and that I didnt think of it earlier ( thanks for the tip btw) It's easy mode now and this was the only boss in BWL that hadnt been consistant for us.

Kasonic · 11/07/06, 11:37 AM

All three guilds I've raided with had Warlocks fearing since day one, so I wouldn't know what it's like without it [=O

Everyone I know who's done both the kiting strat and killing strat(Horde) say that killing is so much more fun and consistent. I don't really see why people even bother kiting; overcomplication ftl.

Although I guess it makes sense that it was the first to pop up and decline in popularity, as it doesn't scale with gear as well as the killing strat does, obviously.

Chiquihuite · 11/07/06, 11:39 AM

Yeah, it makes the fight incredibly boring for us(See also: Garr), but it makes things go much smoother as well. I can handle a boring job if it means not running back for razorgore 3-4 times and wasting all that valuable repair money ;)

◊ Praetorian · 11/07/06, 11:40 AM

I don't think we've ever used warlock fear on Razorgore. We have druids each sleep one, and hunters and 2 warriors kite the rest. Mages, rogues, warlocks, and remaining warriors kill all humanoids.

And, like many, we used the kiting strategy when our server was a laggy POS. When we got hardware upgrades, suddenly we wiped several times in a row and just said to hell with it and killed everything.

Bubba · 11/07/06, 11:43 AM

If you have the killing strat locked down (and yes, short of enjoying watching your shamans dance it really is the most enjoyable strat), then you can take anywhere between 5 minutes to 30 minutes to break all the eggs and it won't make any difference.

Your DPS should have no problems whatsoever dealing with mages/legionnaires if you can kill Nefarian. Whoever's MC'ing Razor just sleeps the dragons as your warriors grab em (each warrior firing a macro to let you know they need a sleep will make this a piece of cake), and then just take the eggs out as you go.

In terms of Orb controlling, the single most useful tip I ever saw was to click on the Orb while still controlling Razor just as the MC is ending - it reduces downtime to nearly less than a second.

Ghiest · 11/07/06, 11:46 AM

We are upto Maexx in nax and onto cthun and we still use the Kite em around like stupid retard method and we rarely lose anyone untill he starts flaming people that are too stupid to back away in phase2.

The only problem I can think of is the lag factor on some of the raids you are experiancing, giving bad performance. We sometimes struggle with Vaelastrasz still with 2-3 attempts needed to wake people up. <shrug>

Bibdy · 11/07/06, 12:38 PM

Sounds like what you need is some more skilled kiters. For us its always been myself and a Hunter doing the vast majority of the kiting of the dragonkin since we switched to the tank & spank method. I once managed to steal every dragonkin but one from the Hunter as we kept running past each other so I had a train of about 9 of the bastards tailing me. Fun! There's nothing quite like seeing Corr and COA ticking on that many mobs at once. Its pretty simple to do if you're adept at controlling your character with a combination of auto-run, jump-casting and flicking the camera around like a sugar-filled candy freak.

Hibernate is VERY good at keeping the Dragonkin stationary until the kiters are back in a reasonable position and ready to pick up the dragonkin to add it to the pack. If you're going to use Fear to control them I would seriously suggest that the Warlocks actually Searing Pain the dragonkin a few times (when its far away, so you have the distance to Fear it again before it reaches you). You don't want the dragonkin wandering off, fear breaking then going straight for a healer somewhere off in the distance - you want it to come straight back to you every time.

◊ Acustar · 11/07/06, 12:42 PM

We used to kite all the mobs (boring as a mage) one day we were having trouble getting the mobs on the tanks so we just killed everything but dragons. Warriors on dragons and just nuke everything, wish we had started this months ago. Once you have enough dps the kill vs kite strat is much better and we're usually a brute force guild anyway :D

Stent · 11/07/06, 12:43 PM

We usually do blackwing on a day that we have a strange or low turnout. With a strange raid comp, or low dps, killing is out of the question. We were using a kiting strat for the longest time. Sometimes it was a oneshot, sometimes it was annoying wipe.

Recently we started having tanks volley with Razor and kite the whole room. It really only takes two volleys. One when things start getting hairy for the healers, and another when the room caps out on adds. Forms two nice neat trains going around the room. With two volleys worth of aggro on everything, I can heal like an idiot and never get aggro.

subscience · 11/07/06, 1:00 PM

^ We also use a solo Warrior to Volley > kite everything. The only downside is that if he goes down, all hell breaks loose. Otherwise, everything is very easily managed.

Maligne · 11/07/06, 1:08 PM

We struggled for 5 nights learning this encounter trying every kite method imaginable. Warlocks, hunters, shaman in the middle with earthbind...everything.

What finally did it for us was DPSing all humanoids in the corners and having our two best warriors (skill, not gear) kite all the dragons. They just stand on each platform until they get 3 dragons, then start doing figure 8's on their respective platforms, each with a druid and priest healing (pallys if you got em). I've been in 3 guilds that have used different strats for this fight, and I can honestly say this method has produced the cleanest kills I've seen.

The only problem is if your two all-star kiting warriors aren't in the raid...lets just say it's a royal PITA to try and teach someone how to kite properly.

subscience · 11/07/06, 1:14 PM

Originally Posted by Maligne

The only problem is if your two all-star kiting warriors aren't in the raid...lets just say it's a royal PITA to try and teach someone how to kite properly.

Ugh, it's very true. In retrospect, I should have spread kiting responsibilities around a bit more, but we're always used to the same two controllers every raid. Last week, one of the controllers couldn't make it until 30 minutes after our start time and we wiped until he signed on. -_-

Maligne · 11/07/06, 1:19 PM

Originally Posted by subscience

Originally Posted by Maligne

The only problem is if your two all-star kiting warriors aren't in the raid...lets just say it's a royal PITA to try and teach someone how to kite properly.

Ugh, it's very true. In retrospect, I should have spread kiting responsibilities around a bit more, but we're always used to the same two controllers every raid. Last week, one of the controllers couldn't make it until 30 minutes after our start time and we wiped until he signed on. -_-

30 minutes eh? Last Saturday we one shot Onyxia and then proceeded to spend the next 4 hours on Razorgore trying to teach our MT how to kite. Finally our veteran kiter signs on and we kill him on our first try. Of course by this point it was close to midnight and we couldn't try Vael, who we'd gotten to .5% on our last night of trying. As a raid leader I learned a very valuable lesson. "If someone can't get something down after an hour of trying...it's time to designate someone else."

Whiteknight · 11/07/06, 1:27 PM

There are many ways of doing this fight, but by far the easiest is to use warriors specifically to kite. Regardless of whether you kill all the humanoids or not.

Many folk swear by using paladins or hunters to kite dragons, warlocks to fear or druids to sleep. Simply put, warriors can kite everything with a lot more room for error than all these strategies, primarily because they can take hits and never get dazed. Every time a paladin or a hunter takes a hit you have a small percentage chance of wiping - a single daze will let the trained mobs catch the kiter and he will die. It can be done without the kiter taking any damage - and I've seen a mage kite the whole room successfully - however it is a *lot* more error prone than simply using a class that can take a fair amount of beating and still keep going *and is immune to daze*. Similarly with CC - when the sleep or the fear breaks, the mob goes after a healer (or the warlock). When I see a sleeped dragon, I shield slam it - because it's vastly safer to have it chasing the warrior.

Subscience: are you aware you can use a single orb controller for the entire fight now?

Sirion · 11/07/06, 1:28 PM

Originally Posted by Maligne

.
What finally did it for us was DPSing all humanoids in the corners and having our two best warriors (skill, not gear) kite all the dragons. They just stand on each platform until they get 3 dragons, then start doing figure 8's on their respective platforms, each with a druid and priest healing (pallys if you got em). I've been in 3 guilds that have used different strats for this fight, and I can honestly say this method has produced the cleanest kills I've seen.

The only problem is if your two all-star kiting warriors aren't in the raid...lets just say it's a royal PITA to try and teach someone how to kite properly.

I couldn't agree more. Out of all the guilds I've been in and different strategies we've used, having two tanks kite dragons and the DPS kill all humanoids almost always results in 0 death, flawless kills.

While we initially had the problem that you and Subscience stated, we remedied it by having each warrior learn to kite the dragons. The learning curve is low enough that any given warrior in your guild should be able to do it, unless he/she is wearing mostly greens and blues. Wasn't really a "PITA" at all-- in fact, these days we usually have our DPS warriors do it, since MTs rarely (with me being the exception) show up to BWL.

Edit: Btw, I usually orb control for the duration of phase I.

Bibdy · 11/07/06, 1:32 PM

Almost any class can kite that many mobs. You just need a good understanding of how to maintain aggro, excellent manouvering skills and enough practice to use the platforms on either side to your advantage. Warriors can be one of the worst. How the heck are they going to keep aggro on that many mobs (over the healers) for so long if they're unable to melee attack them? Mages, Hunters, Warlocks, Druids, Shamans, ANYBODY with a ranged attack which they can use on the move is the best.

If you're good enough (or rather, not-shit enough) you shouldn't ever get hit by the dragonkin.

Whiteknight · 11/07/06, 1:40 PM

The theory of aggro management for the kite is quite simple: heal hate is divided by the number of mobs on your heal target's hate list. So if a warrior has 100 mobs aggroed on him, a 1000 point gheal on the warrior produces exactly 5 hate on each mob (0.5 modifier for heals, divide by 100 mobs).

This means that demo shout is way more than sufficient to hold aggro on everything in the room. It's an AOE aggro mechanism that adds a fixed amount of hate to every mob it touches. In a short amount of time a warrior has every single mob in the room on his hate list so that heal hate is massively divided when he is topped up.

The reason warriors are so good at kiting is simply - they don't need to be as precise as other classes. Any other class cannot afford to get hit - i.e. they *must* perform a perfect kite. Warriors can make mistakes and get hit often and still pull it off successfully.

Sirion · 11/07/06, 1:42 PM

Demo shout has always been sufficient.

Elendril · 11/07/06, 1:49 PM

we use a kiting strat, but a very different one from that which many guilds seem to employ. we have warlocks fear and druids sleep dragons, while the razorgore controller sleeps the rest with calm dragonkin. we kill mages when they're up and legionaires when they're not. once about half the eggs are down, the razorgore controller uses fireball volley to gather all of the mobs and runs razor to the far corner and releases control. another controller grabs it while the initial controller kites the huge mob train around the room. after a while the second controller volleys and takes over the kite, and a third controller kills the rest of the eggs. we use hunters and rogues for controlling both for speed boost for kiting and for their full aggro wipe when they need to release the mobs.

it's basically the only fun part of BWL since they fixed broodlord's leash so he wasn't kitable :-P

Bibdy · 11/07/06, 1:57 PM

Err I hate to break it to you, but if a priest does a low rank Gheal for, say, 1000 on some warrior then he just generated 500 points of threat on absolutely everything he (the priest) and his target (the warrior) are in combat with.

Warriors get that benefit of surviving being dazed, yes, but if you have any inkling of how to use the platforms to your advantage and don't aggro them when they're ahead of you, the dragonkin will always be way out of reach. I've probably been caught up by them like, twice in 30-40 RG kills.

subscience · 11/07/06, 2:03 PM

Originally Posted by Whiteknight

Subscience: are you aware you can use a single orb controller for the entire fight now?

We've tried that, but it didn't work too well for us (since we've always used two controllers). The first controller breaks the first half of eggs and Volley kites the mobs around.

I find Warriors are probably the best kiters due to +Defense lowering the chance for the target to get dazed.

Also, I thought healing through was split amongst the mobs. I mean, if it didn't, the Battle Shout technique wouldn't work in certain fights.

Plea · 11/07/06, 2:08 PM

Are we the only ones who tanked the dragons? 1 warrior to every corner, tanking 3 dragons each.

Sirion · 11/07/06, 2:09 PM

Originally Posted by Bibdy

Err I hate to break it to you, but if a priest does a low rank Gheal for, say, 1000 on some warrior then he just generated 500 points of threat on absolutely everything he (the priest) and his target (the warrior) are in combat with.

Maybe, but I've never lost aggro by spamming demoralizing shout. Even by using the platforms to your advantage as a non-tank kiter (which you should be doing anyway, regardless of your class), you still run a higher risk of failure than if you simply were to use warriors as kiters. This comes strictly from my experience of this encounter, however.

To bolster this point of view, I'd like to add that another guild on my server used paladins to kite dragonkin, and one of my old guilds used hunters to kite them. While many times this strategy was successful on both accounts, there were quite a few occassions of "bad luck" or bad timing on the part of the kiters that caused wipes-- and it almost always had to do with the fact that a kiter got hit by a dragon, was dazed, and then died.

Whiteknight · 11/07/06, 2:58 PM

Originally Posted by Bibdy

Err I hate to break it to you, but if a priest does a low rank Gheal for, say, 1000 on some warrior then he just generated 500 points of threat on absolutely everything he (the priest) and his target (the warrior) are in combat with.

Originally Posted by Kenco

§4§ AOE Threat: Healing, Buffing, Power Gain Each point of healing causes 0.5 threat, forgetting threat modifiers. Overhealing doesnt cause threat. Most buff spells cast on friendly players generate a small amount of threat. Gaining Power (Mana / Energy / Rage) also causes threat in most cases, for example taking a healing potion, or gaining rage from Bloodrage, or Energy from Thistle Tea. Certain spells are exempt, for example mana from Blessing of Wisdom or a Mana Spring totem doesnt cause threat, and there is no threat from the healing gained from Siphon Life. For normal abilities, each point of Mana is 0.5 threat, Rage is 5 threat, and Energy is unknown, probably 5. In the scheme of things, threat from power gain is usually irrelevant, unless you have consistent or burst values, such as taking a mana potion or having Fel Energy running.

These forms of buffs all have infinite range; they will cause threat to all mobs on whose threat list you are on. Furthermore, the threat caused is split equally among all the affected mobs. If you are on one mobs threat list, a 1000 point heal will cause 500 threat to that mob. If 5 mobs are aware of you, the same heal will cause 100 threat on each mob.

(archived here: http://evilempireguild.org/guides/kenco2.php)

Xtee · 11/07/06, 3:00 PM

I on many occasions kited over 10 lego's and almost all the dragons with out losing aggro in my previous guild. Demo shout, with well timed sunder and or heroic strike are great tools that used properly leave almost no incoming damage on the tank. I think class doesn't matter as much as skill of the person who is kiting. If your used to kiting, your a good kiter, and class only plays the role of escapes, and amounts of times you can get hit if you slip up due to lag and what not.

But I think the question was already solved. To Be consistant, stick with killing > kiting.