◊ Quigon

Praetorian the instagibs happen on parries obviously. I never said it wasn't healable outside of them. If you know of a way to reliably heal 28k HP in under 2.5 seconds let me know. All I'm seeing here is picking and choosing about what you're whining about, based solely on what has given you more problems. Both fights are dumb and random, and I can't believe someone can look at Shahraz and say "dumb" and look at archimonde and say "kudos!"
The design aspects of this game are just trash lately, why not fix both fights. Still, just from talking to people who have done both fights 4-5 times, most claim that shahraz is much more repeatable.

 

• Fogbug

Maybe we've just been really lucky, but we've taken several hours to kill archimonde before, and I can't remember ever looking at what killed us and thinking "that was bullshit, nothing we should have done would have prevented that"

By comparison, this happened a number of times on Shahraz. Maybe it's just because we're new to the fight, but I don't see how you survive 3 people getting FA'd into a ranged stack that has just been knocked up by a vile beam. Air burst + grip is really survivable if you have healthstones/pots on hand and a good spread of decursers/healers

We'll have a lot more people with capped SR the next time we do her, though, so maybe things will feel cleaner then. A lot of us were ~40 SR from cap the first time we killed her, which apparently makes a big difference

 

Kaywarrior

I think if the worst burst Patches has ever received from Archimonde is three 6k hits, then he is doing pretty well. I have only died once or twice on the fight before the soul charges / rest of the raid wipe, but it is still pretty possible to get gibbed. I will let this screen shot speak for itself.

http://img185.imageshack.us/img185/3...himondelo0.jpg

Notice the not one, not two, but 3 parries!

 

◊ Praetorian

Obviously he can get a couple of quick hits in a row with parries. I guess the biggest difference is just armor. Personally, I feel like Ironshields are invaluable, and the guild bank makes sure our MT has a 3-digit quantity at all times, and uses them on any boss fight where tank death is even the most remote of possibilities. We also try to keep Inspiration/Ancestral up as much as possible.

Looking at a 7+ min Archimonde kill, the average hit on him was ~6k, with a poor avoidance string looking something like this:

Unless the healers fall asleep, that kind of damage just isn't going to kill the tank. (Also note that while he has good gear, he had basically no t6 tanking gear until recently, and didn't at the time of the above log excerpt -- for our first 4 weeks in BT we saw no tank loot whatsoever except the Supremus ring.)

 

◊ Quigon

Last I checked I had the highest armor (and almost HP) for US tanks - 18705 unbuffed with ironshields and +10 weapon skill (like 40 rating). I don't know how to improve beyond that - we definitely keep a few hundred ironshields around. I mean its only happened twice, I'm just saying, thats what got me... quintuple parries, which should be something like a 1 in a million chance, literally. Maybe we're just the luckiest guild in the world! I mean, I think its almost a fact you're going to wipe eventually from parry bug. We even use GoA now adays cause of it on archi.

I also use less block than Paches by 200 for more avoidance on this fight, but he's hitting me for nearly 9k in his "windfury" of parry responses - demo and tc are up, not sure where the 3k difference is coming from other than AH - I assume that is not his max incoming damage. He can hit for 5-6k a lot, but he tends to still hit for 9k a lot.

Anyway, thats still not the biggest problem with this fight anyway is it? The parry mechanic is truly an overall game breaking issue. The burst it can provide will wipe you on many other otherwise controllable fights (I had a triple parry tonight on Essence of Anger that did nearly 24k in some absurdly low amount of time, yet the fight without parry is perfect - but a parry at the crux of all other damage combined can be lethal).

 

◊ Praetorian

I really don't mean to seem stubborn or obnoxious about this, but that really just doesn't match up with my own experience. Either you have no one providing Ancestral/Inspiration, or Demo isn't staying on as much as you think it is.

Check out this WWS log yourself: Wow Web Stats

The very first hits on the pull, with no Demo, and no Ironshield yet, are for ~8k. After that, we go three minutes before we see a single hit that breaks 7k (let alone 8k). Another 2 minutes later there's a single hit for 10k but that's with the +50% damage Soul Charge in effect. Then back to 5k-6k, and one 8.7k hit near the end where Demo drops off. Note that this is with CoR on 100% of the time.

So during a 7.5min kill, a total of 7 hits were over 7k damage. 2 of those were in the 4 seconds following the pull, and one of them was only that high due to the Soul Charge multiplier. Average melee hit for the full attempt? 5940, with >60% avoidance on top of that.

All of our attempts look like that. Seriously, as a healer, I get more worried about our MT dying on Morogrim than I do on Archimonde, and that's not an exaggeration.

Edit: I'm not going to disagree about parry in general though. It's dumb. And it's even dumber that on Shahraz we're better off having our Lash OTs stand there passively soaking damage because their meager tank DPS isn't worth the risk from parries.

 

◊ Quigon

Its not obnoxious
Demo is definitely not falling, and we do not use CoR. My only guess is this is entirely from AH, which is more than I'd expect (more than a quarter, but 2 shamans are healing me). But you have to add back the block damage when he parry flurries.
I can't see it being anything BUT that at this point - I have a pretty big timer mod to watch after demo.

 

Kaywarrior

I'm with you Maraudor. I don't know how I'm getting hit for upwards of 9k at times, when Paches is only getting hit for 5-6k with only 7 hits being over 7k. I'm popping ironshields, and demo is not falling off. My gear is about the same as Paches' as well, minus a piece or two. And we also don't use CoR either. It has to be AH, because we didn't have a holy priest for attempts, and I think only one shaman was on me. I think I might try to change that up when we attempt again.

And I can't agree with you on Morogrim Praetorian, having bursts, fears and having to move from fires, all the while taking 7k+ hits is (imo) a lot harder then taking some big crushing + tidal burst on Morogrim.

 

Dots

First off, grats on the Mother (and by now also Council) kill.

That is not true, without demo and armor pots, she can hit for 10k. Archimonde melees for almost the same amount. With demo and armor pot, his max melee hit is in the mid to high 7000s.

The parry mechanic should definitely get looked into. A slight attack speed increase on the next swing is alright, but multiple instant strikes are pretty dumb. Especially when a mob can parry just because he turned around to cast a spell on someone.

 

• Sunchips

Question for Quigon and Praetorian.

Do you have a warlock that has 5/5 shadow embrace?

We just got into black temple last week and when learning Gorefiend we noticed a huge difference in tank damage with a SE warlock in the raid.


Not that the 5% damage reduction would make a 3k damage difference, but its something else to add into the mix of boss debuffs.

 

◊ Praetorian

I wouldn't dare leave home without one. One of the best raiding talents out there.

 

Bault

We used a feral on him last week and noticed no difference over a warrior tanking so I can totally agree with this.