Pretty quick and simple question for the mages on these boards.

I'll start by pointing out that i myself am NOT a mage. I am tho a raidleader for a guild with heavy mage attendence and thus this is a question that keeps coming up.

Basicly it's a problem with mages and the ignite, and specificly on the Thaddius fight... After having mages dying again and again and again (keep going here) to over aggro i've gotten pretty pissed of a couple times. I've yelled at them and they've yelled back at me.

I'm a warrior and i keep somewhere around 1300DPS on Thadd without pulling aggro, so i guess it's not a big problem with our MT sucking at threatgeneration (or?)

What i'm wondering is this... Would it omfg-wtf-laydownanddie gimp the mages to switch around the ignite? I've asked if they can't start to notice when an ignite is getting out of hand (we're using KTM) then EVERY mage can switch to like Frostbolts 10 seconds, then make sure a new mage gets the ignite.

They yell at me that it would gimp them and that it isn't doable...

I have a hard time believing all guilds are just content with their firemages dying on Thadd and that it would gimp the damage to switch ignites around.

btw, we are killing Thaddius (twice), but VERY close to enrage time... And maxing dps output for everyone is pretty important atm...

I'm sorry if this is a stupid question from a mage PoV, but i'm having a hard time discussing this with my mages and just wanna get some views on it.

So, how does YOUR guild or YOUR mages handle it?

Fetish of the Sand Reaver and/or Eye of Diminuition can help ALOT, and even then - have the mages make sure they don't go within melee range if they are the current holder of the ignite. But i'm not a mage either ><.

I think it is more a matter of your mages calming down vs. anything your raid or MT can do. Mages esp vs Thaddius get ridiculous Ignites going, and I suppose swapping around the carrier would work as well, but like I said - I just heal so I just pick up random bits of Mages maybe saying something in vent like "trinket not up this could be bad" etc. :>

Isn't Thaddius tauntable? :o While I haven't experienced the fight yet, it's a question of warrior mechanics. If the mob is tauntable there is nothing to stop the MT matching the highest threat target every 8 seconds at no expense and giving the raid a 30% range buffer in the case of mages at range. Surely as the fight goes on it will only become more effective as the 30% margin will be an increasingly larger number especially with the stacking buffs on Thaddius.

or... am I missing something and the ignites are so massive that 8 seconds worth of ticks will generate more than 30% of their previous threat?

Sure he is tauntable. The problem is: taunt gives you the threatlevel of the aggroholder (usually the tank anyway) and not the aggro of the person with the highest threat (in this case the ranged mages).

I for one always look if Thaddius ever targets a mage, then I immediatley taunt. But the fact that he does random targetting for chainlightning purposes does not help this concept.
Add to this that i always save a taunt for the transition change and dead mages are a real possibility. Even more so when you use the simple 2 corner tactic (which we do) where mages get in melee range when their polarity changes - though blink could help there. Dont know.

regards

XYZ MAGE: IM GOING TO GET AGRO !!!! ALL STOP FIRE SPELLS !!!!
XYZ MAGE: IM GOING TO GET AGRO !!!! ALL STOP FIRE SPELLS !!!!

From my brief stint harassing the mages in their class channel I believe this is the method they use to control the uncontrollable ignites.

Each one has a macro and on Thaddius (only fight where its a real problem) if one is getting insane 5 figure ignites he spams the macro and the mages switch to a couple of frostbolts until the ignite drops off and then they all go fire again.

Arcane Resilience, improved Frost Armor. Stoneshield Pots and tanking him. Not serious although IIRC Thaddius can be taunted and he doesn't hit amazingly hard on plate.

Our mages tend to use Limited Invulnerability Pots and start screaming "BoP, BoP, BoP" on Vent.

The problem is this. IIRC my fireballs crit for about 7-8k on Thaddius. I can easily crit once, watch the ignite tick for 2 or 3k, then bam, the next tick is 20k or something. It just stacks way too damn fast to control sometimes, but at the same time you cannot sacrifice all your fire mages in raid switching to frostbolt or arcane missiles. There are a couple things you can do though.

1. Mages need to limit their use of scorch, it's much much easier to sustain ignite stacks with scorch being cast and you don't want that on Thaddius.
2. They should be careful in the beginning of the fight, real careful, there's much more leeway for a huge ignite tick of 20k to tick a few times 3 minutes in than there is 30 sec in.
3. Stagger combustion use. If they are popping combustion on/around the same time they're asking to die.
4. Limited invuln pots and BoP do work wonders.
5. There are several mods floating around right now that track ignites and show the amount they are ticking for and which person is getting credit for them, if all your mages had that it'll help a bit imo.

Thaddius is one of my least favorite fights in Naxx because of several reasons. Like everyone else I'm fucking sick of disconnects wiping the raid, but more than that I fucking hate dps'ing as a fire mage on Thaddius for this very reason of how quickly you can pull aggro and it's really hard to prevent it and try to max dps at the same time.

I usually track ignites with addon or directly from debuffs and if I see a ignite stack growing and one mage pulling ahead in dmgmeters, I'll just shout "stop fire damage" to vent to prevent catastrophes. Usually you don't have to watch out for ignites unless fighting vulnurable mobs...

Basically Twinemps is the only place I'm worried of ignites at all outside of vulnurability fights, we've had problems with 5 mages casting fireball and everyone critting netting a nice ignite that ticks almost 3k each tick few times resulting in one mage overaggroing from warlock tank and breaking the tank-cycle.

Having a FOTSR myself, whenever I pull great ignites I just tend to pop the trinket and shout for "keep up critting guys" to pull some lead on dmgmeter ;). Without FOTSR fights like Chromaggus, Ossirian or Thaddius can actually end up in disaster ignites ticking tens of thousands each tick and lasting 2-3 ticks. Problem is that you just can't know for sure if the next ignite tick is going to be a big one, unless you really are on a ball watching your ignite calculator (which I tend to do continuously).

We just try to manage ignites so that only the guys with FOTSR take the biggest stacks. We do it via voicecom's or macros in classchannels, depending a bit about which encounter. Also you could try recommending them Ignition ui mod from cursegames. Just target mob, click set-target button which sets your current target as ignite target and the mod keeps track on who has the ignite and for how much it is ticking and the total sum the current ignite stack has netted. The mod benefits from extended combatlog range. It also shows how much time you have to crit again to keep ignite ticking... Or not to crit to let it fall as in this case.

Seems to work fairly well on bosses, but for trashpulls with lots of mobs with same name it tends to fail, not that ignites on trash should give you that much problems anyway.

Funny, we've never had too much trouble with this, and we have some really well-geared Fire Mages. There's the occasional danger point when a bunch you crit in the first minute (which results in someone watching KTM just having to shout "STOP" on Vent). If it was really close, that person will skip the first Combustion (we Combust at about 1:00 and 4:30).

We have a TF tank, though. By halfway through, he's got a pretty good lead.

It's pretty hard to let all mages cancelling their cast within a few seconds, though a skilled mage should see if another mages gets too high on dmg.
Someone pulling aggro over and over again is mostly because of his own stupidity though. I'm 100% against the use of KTM but noone should ever get aggro with this mod but I think the main problem is that mages love their ignites too much ;)
Anyways if it stays a problem, let them use limited invulnerability pots. Problem solved

Thanks, that'd be the bit I missed. Posting at work is always a hazard.

Ignite Roulette would certainly galvanise them in to spamming their STOP macros with greater effect.

Best.Idea.Ever.

lmfao, genius.

We had this problems when we started testing Thaddius. After one transition the mages should be able to go all out (at least if you are alliance). And taunt. Once our MT started taunting, we never lost a fire mage due to aggro concerns in this fight. Even before our best fire mage (who put out really sick dps) left the raid.

Mem: As explained earlier in this thread, Taunt only gives you the aggro of the current aggroholder (Which should be the tank).

If Thaddius has allready targetted a mage you'd have to have some extreme fucking superluck to be able to taunt in the split second BEFORE he hits... OR, pray to some higher power that the mage dodges and then you taunt... And even then you'll prolly have a 20k ignite ticking to battle.

I guess we'll give mages some sweet -DKP or something from dying to ignites. That should get em working. :)

The ONLY problem as i said is the mage who gets the first ignite... Everyone else goes all out and never risk aggro.

And i don't even think we have any well geared ferals tbh :/

We have a TF tank so it's not much of a problem. Once a month the mages will get "unlucky" early and 1 will die. We do use simultaneous combustion after like 1:30 without pulling aggro.

O,o? how can you even be on thaddius and not have any druids with sick feral gear? AQ 40 ought to have set your druids up by now, and portal->respec->summon works fine if you want to give this a go. (pick someone who has actual experience with bear form tough.) and is cheaper on the guild bank than wiping. (we have done this when low on warriors..) Altough if the problem is ignitehappy mages, then having them get a clue is probably the solution.

I specced into defiance because i have the OT gear (t2.5, drakefang, ca 23% buffed crit hand in hand with +110 def) and a TF, which fully benefit from the Thaddius buff - more so than a 6/8 T3 Tank we usually go with (and who regularly lost aggro to me when i was in DPS gear ... so it was a rational move to let me tank)
I usually do not lose aggro frome the get go, but ignites can get to absurd numbers on this fight . One mage died and told me he had ignites ticking for 31K (which for me is hard to believe, but what do i know ... i'm no mage).

How am I supposeded to hold aggro against THAT? No TF and no gear ingame could change that.

regards

bad idea, mages can get lucky/unlucky with ignites and most of the time it's not the mage pulling aggro his fault.
If my guild would give me -dkp for pulling aggro I would do half the dmg I do now and so will every other mage and then you have a problem.

tell your mages to wise up and call out for a few frostbolts