So, after trying 3 different browsers, I still cannot get the Search feature to work, and after about 35 minutes of skimming through Karazhan threads I haven't found what I was looking for, so here's a new topic that I hope can spur up some discussion the Nightbane encounter. (Or hopefully someone can provide me with a link to a discussion I missed regarding my questions)

After dealing with some issues as far as dealing with the smaller raid sizes, and balancing for raid composition this week my guild has finally gotten in 2 "A Teams" into Karazhan to push for first kills on Nightbane this week. We cleared the second half of the instance last night, and started putting some work on Nightbane.

The encounter itself seems well designed, and the mechanics of the fight (as most know) aren't anything too incredibly challenging. As we were progressing smoothly along during the evening, we were consistantly living through the Bone Rain, and competently handling the skeletons that were spawning, but after they died, and Nightbane was landing was where things stopped going so smoothly. Nightbane just seemingly landed along the terrace where ever he felt would be nice, and upon touch down, wound up either aggroing upon one of our healers, or a dps class, even though our protection spec'd tank, sundered him twice, and shield slammed him once on the run to Nightbane (this was on the lucky attempt where he landed near our tank). Other times, Nightbane would just land haphazardly seemingly anywhere along the terrace.

I understand that upon first summon Nightbane will land near the little skull that is on the terrace, every time. However upon completion of the "phase 2" flying stage, what determines where he will land along the terrace, and second, does he retain his threat list from his flying stage? ... Or perhaps is the threat generated during his ground phase given back upon touch down? Again I apologize if this topic has been discussed, but any insight into the mechanics of these 'transitional' phases of the fight would be quite helpful.

Ah alright, so I assume (based on our group composition) that either healing threat, or the threat generated from the warlock's dot's applied to him during the last part of his flying phase would be generating the threat that was causing them to pull aggro. Our raid doesn't have a hunter, but I think we can work around it. Does he land on the person with the most threat after his threat reset?

Having tanked it, I can tell you there are a lot of facts, rumors, myths, and bugs on this fight.

If you stand on the terrace and look toward the village, and a "flattened bucket" is on your left by about 5 yards, this is where nightbane will spawn in the first phase 1.

After phase 2, he will attempt to land. The myth is that he will land more readily if you are against the rail... trust me this isn't a fact. Maybe it applies to other members of the raid, but I don't think so.

The terrace itself is a semicircle. With the circle itself broken into many straight and small pieces each with an angle off of the next. The bucket represents a vertex between two of these adjacent straight pieces. Where he lands after phase 2 is roughly 3 sections further to the left if facing toward the village, off the terrace, from where he usually lands in phase 1.

You can actually shift the raid in the 2nd and 3rd phase 1's to pick him up at this new "spawn" point. You can SS and HS and whatever him before he lands, and MD for extra aggro.

But be warned, you can land 2-3 attacks, burn your rage, and he will take off and fly again once in a while. For us, he always takes off at least 1 additional time, and always lands on the 2nd attempt. Perhaps if he landed immediately on me it would be closer to the bucket from the first phase 1, but this is my experience. Moving the raid is unrealistic however, unless they know its coming. YMMV.

I also recommend bandaging yourself as you transition out of phase 2. However, he moves so fast that you're going to need luck if you don't hit him as he lands to retain control. You'll be lucky at best to land an attack as he speeds past you faster than the speed of lag.

Furthermore, if a fear is incoming, you have to chooose: break fear and lose a member from direct? get feared, get aggro, and then lose someone while feared but retain immediately after. If you're alliance, you needn't worry about such petty things like fear I suppose.

He can also bug out and stay indefinitely in the air in phase 2. And he can also bug out and require a soft reset to actually properly summon again. At least he's not Gruul I suppose.

Can people stop making the assumption that every Alliance guild runs every encounter with fear in it has a Dwarf or Draenai priest? Just because the option exists doesn't mean every guild has them, because quite frankly most priests for whatever reason decided that shadowmeld, 1% dodge and Grace of Elune would clearly be more useful than outright fear prevention and stoneform. It is in fact possible that Alliance players just might have the same frame of reference as your perpetually downtrodden selves.

Seriously, there are like 100 Dwarf Priests serverwide. I can name 3 Dwarf Priests on my server, and at least 50 Night Elves or Humans.

Stop being such a drama queen. Surely you realize I was speaking to the option; perhaps you even caught the slight sarcasm in the diction. You don't have to defend overpowered abilities by claiming you don't have them. No one cares. Use it if you got it, perhaps that was the point of my "constructive" post. Sickening, seriously.

Nightbane fear isn't that bad. He does it pretty infrequently most of the time (I've seen 100->75 with zero fears more than once). Just pace yourself a bit on DPS, and have the tank build strong aggro for ~30 seconds after every fear, then stop as soon as his Rage cooldown is back up and just HS/block until the next fear. Nightbane provides basically infinite rage, so even with taking little breaks from more active aggro generation, threat really shouldn't be an issue.

Also, please, drop the "omg fear ward is OP"/"no way we have no dwarf priests but you have WotF anyway!" bullshit. Didn't that get old, oh... two years ago, on Onyxia?

No, its when you make a comment like that you are basically invalidating someones perspective on that particular mechanic. As I stated just because alliance can have fear warders, the reality on most servers is they are so rare its a fluke if a guild has 1. I would've thought when both got the opposing faction specific class the little easy mode jabs would stop, but clearly not. I'm not being a drama queen, it just gets old. Rather than sticking on point its an opportunity to get in a little "life is hard for the horde" commentary, its the kind of thing you see r&d trolls pulling out daily.

But on topic usually I find he has agro on whoever healed after the agro wipe, so its typically on the smoking blast paladin as he is usually still healing as he is flying to land. Misdirection has to be used basically right after the shout when he is still in the air, and it helps to intervene whichever healer happens to have agro on landing. The only good counter to fear on landing is just being prepared to dance it when it happens, but there is a small chance that he'll fear in mid landing and the screen won't shake if that happens.

Well my experience is he lands in the same area on the far right of the terrace, every time. It just depends how far he runs to go after whoever he has agro on. Agro seems to be entirely dependant on who healed the most as he was landing, never seen a non healer have agro on landing from healing immolation damage or anything. This could be controllable too if just 1 person did the spot healing before landing.

The fear doesn't come very often and is easily avoided by a warrior, no real need for fear ward on it. Unless your karazhan group for the week was made up with the assumption that the druid would be main tanking every fight

We're gonna try and get our fury warrior OT some upgrades out of heroics in the next couple days before giving nightbane another shot. It's just kind of like being kicked in the balls when you easily MT every other encounter in the zone but are useless on the last boss because of a mechanic you were told would no longer be an issue.

I'm not sure how to cordially say this, but perhaps get over yourself my friend. We were talking about how to grab Nightbane at the start of phase 1 after a phase 2. An early fear here makes the initial grab much more difficult, and had to be addressed with discussing what skills and abilities to be used to pickup. Thus - if he were alliance, and he had fear ward, he should use it because it completely removes the element. This is a fact, not some faction debate or emotional banter.

Trust me, from a tanking perspective, while trying to pull nightbane off someone, or grab him at the start of phase 2, an early bellowing roar will likely get you feared because you're simply not ready for it, concentrating on everything else - or before globals from initial grab aggro are reset. If he had the tools to remove this part, it would greatly help him in the pickup. I'm not sure why you feel as if your kill has been invalidated by the audacious claims that fear ward stops fears, especially since you don't have a dwarf priest, but it was an apt and very useful suggestion to someone having difficulty restabilizing phase 1. If you didn't have a hunter in your guild, would my claim of misdirection be as damning?

That being said, you don't need fear ward to kill this guy by any stretch of the imagination. But it helps with this particular part, as does MD, as does bandaging, as does positioning. I was being pretty comprehensive, if you read the original post for what it was.

Personally, I'm just curious if anyone has actually downed him with a shadow priest, and what that miracle composition was. I'll assume mad consumables were involved.

Prot war, 2 holy pals, shaman, holy priest, frost mage, fire mage, rogue, hunter, warlock = barely getting past the first takeoff/landing.