Anyone in a raiding guild knows exactly what "farm status" means. Generally, a group of raiders spend time learning an encounter, press buttons in the right order, and collect loot. I say generally because every now and then Blizzard designs a boss who defies their general design rules. This is the case with Prince Malchezaar in Karazhan.

Our 3rd week and kill took us 12 attempts due purely to bad luck with infernals. Everyone has seen the fight well over 50 times now. What was Blizzard thinking here? Why design an encounter which throws elements like infernals into the equation? It's so incredibly frustrating to break through 30% and be totally boxed in, only to hear on Vent:

"Son of a.. right on top of us.."

I don't think I've ever seen another fight more poorly designed than this one is. Hell, even Vaelastrasz's randomness with healers can be compensated for. But these infernal spawns are really out of people's control, to a large extent. There's only so much you can do with movement.

There are locations in the room where you'll never be hit by infernals, and you can see where the infernals are landing before they land. You should either find a location in the room where you don't have to move, or move before you get boxed in and your options are gone.

And it's enough.

Infernals drop every ~30 seconds. If you aren't in a wide-open space, at 65% or so, have the tank move Prince to the largest open space currently available. That guarantees lots of wiggle room even if you get as unlucky as possible after 60%. By the time it's mathematically possible for you to be truly hemmed in, he should be below 30%, and you can relocate again if needed. You really don't want to have everyone run across the area when he's in phase 2 (though you can, with shield wall, or some extremely pro healing), but otherwise it's no big deal.

Prince is a well-designed fight, and tons of people one-shot him every week despite "bad luck." Sorry.

Edit: Furthermore, some element of randomness can be a welcome element -- it requires players to adapt and think on the fly, which is what keeps PvE content fresh and fun. If the infernals dropped in a fixed pattern every time, the fight would be tedious, and it'd just be a new take on Heigan Phase 1.

You're aware your tank can drag him through the Infernal hellfire to get to a safe spot yes? We had to take him through one when we got boxed in at the start of phase two. Ok so its not fun, and you certainly dont want to be risking it at any point other than just after a Shadow Nova, but its doable. If you are wiping 12 times to it, I suggest that you plan a route for where to move if a infernal lands on you to prevent the occurances of getting boxed in as much as possible.

On our last kill we had an Infernal land on top of the MT and melee right at the start of phase two and [edit] I lie, apparently it was at the end of phase two, not the start of phase 3[/edit]. Its not really a problem to deal with providing you start moving to a sensible position once you see the fireball dropping. If you're getting backed into a corner 12 times in a row, then you need to change your strategy for moving him. Theres only 4 or 5 infernals up at once. To get trapped more than one deep, you would have to be ultra unlucky, or not have planned your route correctly.

Premptive movement, even if you arnt yet "boxed in" at 65% is a pretty good idea. Maybe start in the back right corner and move to the back middle at that point. I think some adjustment is probably in order given that most people who are working on the seeming randomness of Prince just came from Aran, a pure execution fight.

There is nothing random about where the Infernals spawn. Which ones spawn, certainly, but there are set locations. About the only random thing I can think is significant is just the times where he decides to crushing blow me 6-7 times in a row, but hey, I'm a bear tank, thems the breaks.

http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/1...ge00001fn9.jpg


Sometimes there just ain't enough room in the world.

Default partyframes?

this is our no-movement position. there's one infernal location that makes it impossible for your melee to get out of enfeeble (as you can see by the dead warrior/rogue), but standing where i am in this picture, your ranged will never have to move for the duration of the fight.

Yea I'm going to have to disagree with the OP, I mean besides the occasional bug the Prince is a very well designed encounter, and its the kind of bad luck that you can mostly control. There are many, many encounters where luck has a much larger impact than in this one.

Without using a similiar positioning to elendrils, I find the fight's learning curve to have a high degree of variance, which I dislike.

Once the fight is on farm, there are probably very few infernal sets that are crippling, although there are many which can be very difficult and require a very fast cohesive response.

As the raid leader responsible for teaching the fight (I beat it in beta, a long time back now, and have been going through the learning curve over and over with different groups, so I feel confident saying I am familiar with it) to new people and always going with the newer group, I find the degree of randomness in the difficulty to be an irritant during the learning phase.

That said, I don't feel nearly as bad about karazhan as I do about gruul.

(This is literally what goes through my head every time I think about gruul)
Double his hp when we potted him into the ground indeed. Why this time the buff instead of the nerf bat. Every other time you've reached for the nerf bat, but this time crazy buff guy won and you buff the mob and not nerf the ridiculous t5 or better stats through consumables?

/headesk

Prince I just sigh a bit and know there's going to be the deaths to "unfortunate infernals for a new crew". Eventually it's farm and everyone thinks it's easy.

Anyone in wow doing a study on how people learn? Lots of source material here.

Learn to watch for the infernals and readjust your raid quickly. Also, remember that as the fifth infernal is landing, the first one despawns - this should give you an idea of a good movement pattern to use.

Myself and our raid considers prince to be one of the easiest encounters in the entire zone (and for the best loot!). It really just seems like a tank gear check to me. Hungarfen on heroic in underbog is very similar to prince in terms of execution and both are easily, reliably, reproducable kills. Maybe if you have some people who are bad about pinning themselves in they can go practice Hungarfen until they don't get hit by spores anymore.

I have to agree with the previous poster. Prince really is not that hard if you take the time to adjust before infernals are a serious problem.

We don't use the movement free position displayed earlier in this thread as we feel we shouldn't get used to something that seems unintended, but you really don't have to. There are a few times when you really are boxed in and cannot do anything about it, but there is also a lot you can do before that becomes an issue. On our very early attempts we had issues with all of our healers being in the same spot. This was a very large issue, because if an infernal ever landed on that spot (or near enough to force a move) durring Phase 2 our tank was assured a quick trip to the graveyard. We changed how the healers positioned themselfs, and we don't have that issue today.

We used the spot Elendril does for one of our kills. It worked excellent, but we came back next week and had an infernal land pretty much directly on us, so we figured it wasn't worth it. It's not like the fight is that hard that you need to do that.

Err - If that's true, I've certainly never seen it. There are several that land nearby that look like they ought to be dangerous, but I've never had to move once I've been in that spot.

Heh, thats only true till about 6 minutes in the fight when the rate at which he calls in more infernals is reduced from every 45 seconds to every 20 seconds (meaning you can now have 9 infernals up at any point in time).

Oh - I guess our DPS is very good, then, because we tend to not run into this problem until under 30%.

What kind of consumables are people using on this guy? Is a flask + stoneshields pretty common? I know without a flask a decently geared tank just got 2 shot in phase 2 (2 back to back 5-6 crushings). Its definetely a really fun encounter to heal, his damage output seems a little high though for a 10 man boss.

For infernal positions we just have our most observant person watch where they are coming in with a raid marking over their head and they will usually lead us in the right direction. Another thing to note when you move is make sure all the healers do not move at once or you will have a dead tank. (Paladin bubble works very well if you have to run through an infernal to get to a new position).

Flask should be more than sufficient. Chug stone/ironshields at will during phase 2 if you want a bit more breathing room.

The fight is easily done without consumables. I tanked him with 15k+ hitpoints and 14k+ armor buffed and didn't run into any problems.

Yes, there's some randomness to this fight, but it's hardly insurmountable. Start moving before you get boxed in. If all the infernals are on the right half of the room, dont continue to tank him along the center wall -- move more toward the left side. I think the biggest problem is people dont leave themselves an "out."

Taking a few ticks of an infernal is not a death sentence either. (unless you're enfeebled of course)