Regarding Saurfang10
I realize this'll be of little interest to players focused on 10 man HMs and 25 man content, but this did prove important to our getting Saurfang down:
For reasons unknown, we experienced Blood Beast control problems with our dps set-up (Hunter x 2, Cat Druid, Enh. Shaman and Mutilate Rogue). The hunters were on Blood Beast detail, and the problems resulted in too much time off Saurfang for the them which in turn lowered our collective raid dps too much.
Our solution was to taunt one of the Blood Beasts to the melee camp as they spawned, have me pool energy for a Mutilate/Kidney Shot (saved extra Overkill for time on boss, so no Cheap Shot) on that Blood Beast which provided enough time for the melee group to take it down.
This obviously made things easier for our hunters which gained a lot more stand still dps time on the boss. Eventhough it's bordering on blasphemy to have a Mutilate rogue switch targets on Saurfang, and eventhough it did decrease my personal dps a bit, it meant an overall delay of Blood Power stacking on Saurfang compared to other attempts and it increased of our collective raid dps enough to move from three less than 5% wipes to a kill.
Regarding Saurfang10
I realize this'll be of little interest to players focused on 10 man HMs and 25 man content, but this did prove important to our getting Saurfang down:
For reasons unknown, we experienced Blood Beast control problems with our dps set-up (Hunter x 2, Cat Druid, Enh. Shaman and Mutilate Rogue). The hunters were on Blood Beast detail, and the problems resulted in too much time off Saurfang for the them which in turn lowered our collective raid dps too much.
Our solution was to taunt one of the Blood Beasts to the melee camp as they spawned, have me pool energy for a Mutilate/Kidney Shot (saved extra Overkill for time on boss, so no Cheap Shot) on that Blood Beast which provided enough time for the melee group to take it down.
This obviously made things easier for our hunters which gained a lot more stand still dps time on the boss. Eventhough it's bordering on blasphemy to have a Mutilate rogue switch targets on Saurfang, and eventhough it did decrease my personal dps a bit, it meant an overall delay of Blood Power stacking on Saurfang compared to other attempts and it increased of our collective raid dps enough to move from three less than 5% wipes to a kill.
You could have simply taunted back the adds to have two times the way,
I mean, the adds spawn around saurfang, then the ranged dps them down, so the adds will run towards them, if they are close to the ranged, your tanks (it should be two in 10 Man because of the debuff), taunt them back towards saurfang, you get an extra time to dps the adds down without wasting dps .
An additional option is do let the hunters lay down some ice traps, this will slow down the adds too!
(Sorry for my bad english, im not used to write munch in english, my grammar sucks^^)
Taunt kiting was done, yet, for a number of reasons, the method I described proved a lot less RNG prone for us in terms of delaying Marks of the Fallen Champion. This made it more managable for us alltogether; and obviously, Frost Traps were used regardless of approach.
I'm not at all suggesting that this would be the right thing to do for everyone, however, what you're proposing wouldn't help increase the hunter's stand-still dps time on the boss as much as our method, and, in the end, that's what increased the collective dps for our particular raid set-up the most.
What we could invistigate a little further, perhaps, is having out-of-rotation tanks and healers help with Blood Beast CC. Most noteworthy for us: Entangling Roots and Hammer of Justice. This, however, isn't rogue specific, of course.
We've had a rogue/feral/ret pally setup assigned to stun lock one of the beasts in 10man Saurfang.
The beast pulled out maybe 1 attack per spawn and we were back on the boss within 4 seconds.
EDIT:
Pally was starting with HoJ and since we had a warrior tank among us, on the second wave a warrior popped Concussion Blow, then it's just a matter of keeping that rotation.
Do you mean as it's being cast like you can do with fears?
Yes, exactly the way you would vanish immune something in PvP or any other ability used in PvE, his mark has a short cast time, and if you realize that you are being the one targeted and time your vanish correctly, you can negate one of his marks completely.
Yes, exactly the way you would vanish immune something in PvP or any other ability used in PvE, his mark has a short cast time, and if you realize that you are being the one targeted and time your vanish correctly, you can negate one of his marks completely.
Not entirely true. You can vanish while he is casting it on you, but he will simply re-cast it again a second or two later on someone else.
Not entirely true. You can vanish while he is casting it on you, but he will simply re-cast it again a second or two later on someone else.
I assume the same holds true for feint, in which case, wouldn't it be better to just let the mark be cast on you since the raid can't avoid it anyway? At least this way, the healers would be prepared and you don't waste time or energy vanishing or feinting the mark.
Not entirely true. You can vanish while he is casting it on you, but he will simply re-cast it again a second or two later on someone else.
No, you aren't getting the point; if you vanish while it is in the air (hence, already been cast), you do not get the debuff, and it depletes the runic power that he has, which means he doesn't cast it a few seconds later. It's the same idea as vanish cancelling a death coil in PvP or the big bang on Algalon; it negates the effect.
EDIT: See #3 below, that is correct. I've been able to do it in both 10 and 25man.
I admit I haven't tested, but my sense is that there's three different things being suggested here:
1) Feint. Feint does not prevent you from taking the mark; however, I believe the assertion is that marks are considered AoE damage and, as such, will be reduced by Feint. I.e., if you feint on cooldown, you can reduce the total damage you take by 30%. This is potentially useful; whether it's worth doing depends greatly on your circumstances.
2) Vanishing to break targeting. If he targets you, you can vanish to break targeting; however, doing so causes him simply to pick someone else as well. As such, this is not very useful.
3) Vanish-immuning. At the exact moment you vanish, there's a fraction of a second where you are completely invulnerable. You've probably had situations where a mob hits you for 60k damage - and it shows up as 60k damage in the logs - but you survive anyway, because you vanished at the exact instant the attack landed. In previous content, this has been useful for, for instance, avoiding Web Spray on Maexxna. I believe what is being asserted is that this can be done to Mark as well, such that he casts it, the logs will show it landing, he spends energy and whatever as though it landed (because it did)... but because you were vanish-invulnerable at that instant, the spell does not actually apply to you, hence completely negating the effect. I cannot confirm that it works, myself, but I believe that is what's being asserted here.
So: vanishing to break targeting isn't useful (though doesn't really hurt anything, either). Feinting to reduce damage is useful if you're having healing issues. However, if it is in fact possible to vanish-immune and thus utterly negate a mark, that would be very useful indeed.
I admit I haven't tested, but my sense is that there's three different things being suggested here:
1) Feint. Feint does not prevent you from taking the mark; however, I believe the assertion is that marks are considered AoE damage and, as such, will be reduced by Feint. I.e., if you feint on cooldown, you can reduce the total damage you take by 30%. This is potentially useful; whether it's worth doing depends greatly on your circumstances.
2) Vanishing to break targeting. If he targets you, you can vanish to break targeting; however, doing so causes him simply to pick someone else as well. As such, this is not very useful.
3) Vanish-immuning. At the exact moment you vanish, there's a fraction of a second where you are completely invulnerable. You've probably had situations where a mob hits you for 60k damage - and it shows up as 60k damage in the logs - but you survive anyway, because you vanished at the exact instant the attack landed. In previous content, this has been useful for, for instance, avoiding Web Spray on Maexxna. I believe what is being asserted is that this can be done to Mark as well, such that he casts it, the logs will show it landing, he spends energy and whatever as though it landed (because it did)... but because you were vanish-invulnerable at that instant, the spell does not actually apply to you, hence completely negating the effect. I cannot confirm that it works, myself, but I believe that is what's being asserted here.
So: vanishing to break targeting isn't useful (though doesn't really hurt anything, either). Feinting to reduce damage is useful if you're having healing issues. However, if it is in fact possible to vanish-immune and thus utterly negate a mark, that would be very useful indeed.
You can, in fact, Vanish-Immune his mark and he does not retarget and cast on someone else. Furthermore, it DOES deplete the Runic Power. I succeeded in using this tactic a few times last night in the 10M version. It is not necessarily needed, but we had alt/Friend healers. If anything, it is another way for a rogue to remain personally aware of his own survival and burden on the healers.
Taunt kiting was done, yet, for a number of reasons, the method I described proved a lot less RNG prone for us in terms of delaying Marks of the Fallen Champion. This made it more managable for us alltogether; and obviously, Frost Traps were used regardless of approach.
I'm not at all suggesting that this would be the right thing to do for everyone, however, what you're proposing wouldn't help increase the hunter's stand-still dps time on the boss as much as our method, and, in the end, that's what increased the collective dps for our particular raid set-up the most.
What we could invistigate a little further, perhaps, is having out-of-rotation tanks and healers help with Blood Beast CC. Most noteworthy for us: Entangling Roots and Hammer of Justice. This, however, isn't rogue specific, of course.
Our only ranged was a hunter, and that caused a lot of issues for us with this strat. We eventually decided to swap some tanks around and have one of the tanks bring in his hunter. We ended up with two hunters. This meant two frost traps, two distracting shots, and two pets. They were each able to take out their add in about 25 seconds or so, leavin gthem some time to viper some mana back up on the boss. This left the rest of our melee heave team (Rogue, DK, Retadin) to wail on Saurfang non-stop. Instead of possibly losing poisons on a hard switch between adds (something that the DK would experience with diseases, and even the ret pally to a lesser extent) and running around chasing them down once they've been taunted, we were able to sit on the boss and just focus on our rotations. This worked so well that even when our holy priest died to Mark of the Deathbringer (and healed saurfang twice, thanks for spirit of redemption), we were still able to get him down.
They were each able to take out their add in about 25 seconds or so, leavin gthem some time to viper some mana back up on the boss.
As I mentioned, we also had two hunters along; we also tried to simply have the hunters kite-kill the Blood Beasts; we also tried to keep the melee group on the boss at all times. That didn't quite do the trick for us.
In the end it became apparant to us, that our highest collective raid dps was achieved by increasing the two hunters' stand still dps time on the boss. So, since the Blood Beasts spawn every 40 secs, having both hunters spend 25 seconds off the boss and most of the remaining 15 seconds doing reduced damage on account of Aspect of the Viper probably wouldn't have been the way to go for us.
Also, having the melee group switch targets wasn't really troublesome, and overall, having two hunters kill one Blood Beast while the melee group KSh-killed the other delayed Marks of the Fallen Champion significantly compared to when the hunters each dealt with a Blood Beast. This helped make the encounter a tad easier for the healers.
As I mentioned, we also had two hunters along; we also tried to simply have the hunters kite-kill the Blood Beasts; we also tried to keep the melee group on the boss at all times. That didn't quite do the trick for us.
To each their own. We just found that keeping our melee on the boss led to stacks of debuffs not falling off, which allowed all three of us to maximize our damage, which was enough to bring Saurfang down before he could cast mark 3 times (which, in no small part, was thanks to the amazing kiting and burst of our hunters). Not every strat works for every group, and, as a rogue, I was glad I was able to just focus on the boss, and call thing out over vent, instead of having to run around chasing a kited add, use KS and have to start up 3 more poison stacks every time the adds spawned.
I too can attest to the strength of allowing melee to focus on dpsing Saurfang (10 man). Me and a DK focused only on the boss with the tank and offtank. We had 3 other range who's job was to kite and dps down the adds. This kept Saurfang from building up power too fast since each melee strike from the adds add to his power. Due to their excellent kiting and our focused dps we downed Saurfang with only one mark up.
1. First, and this is more of a general bug, you can currently have someone release from their bodies when they've gotten a Mark, and then battle-rez them with no Mark.
2. Second, using WP is something I'd highly advise against, since the loss in dps would have to account for the 200% of the healing done (after an attempt using WP) for it to be viable. I've tried using WP and lost quite a bit of DPS; in the order of 500-1000. Therefore, it hasn't proved to be viable for me since healing was never really an issue due to instant taunts, and the amount of damage to be lost was enormous.
1) You can use Tricks to a ranged kiter and beat the snot out of a Blood Beast and it won't target anyone in range - swapping for a few seconds to get it firmly out of the melee pile may be a benefit for your strategy - it may not. Regardless, it's a good plan to use tricks at that point because it'll up the damage of the person doing the kiting, stick it to them, and make it so it doesn't take a swing at any melees on its way out.
2) Some sort of healing reduction is enormous on this fight. On normal the hits are between 5100 and 6900 (average: 6k), healing him for 5x the amount of damage dealt (average: 30k), and it's cast every 30 seconds. If he gets one swing off per rune application, 30k * .5 reduction/30s = 500 dps lost - or dead even. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say he'll likely get one swing off per rune application - maybe he swings instantly, maybe he doesn't, maybe there's a taunt resist, etc. Anyhow, it's a TON of healing and if you don't have an aimed shot or Mortal Strike going up normally, Wound Poison is, in my opinion, a significant thing.
Consistency. It's only a virtue if you're not a screwup.
I don't know if it makes a difference, but I was in a raid composition without MS aside from rogues, and I was the only one applying WP. After a few attempts someone mentioned his heals didn't seem reduced, so I switched to IP/DP and we killed him in that attempt much easier than in any other attempt prior. Maybe things just clicked on that attempt, but just thought I'd mention it anyway.. I can't remember seeing or reading anywhere that MS will reduce his self heals and I've looked at a few strats.
Edit: we used 2 tanks, with very quick taunts after debuff application
The timing to get an Immune Vanish its 0.4-0.2s before the cast ends, before it is too soon and it will target another people, between 0.2 et 0s its too late because of the server-client lag.
3) Vanish-immuning. At the exact moment you vanish, there's a fraction of a second where you are completely invulnerable. You've probably had situations where a mob hits you for 60k damage - and it shows up as 60k damage in the logs - but you survive anyway, because you vanished at the exact instant the attack landed. In previous content, this has been useful for, for instance, avoiding Web Spray on Maexxna. I believe what is being asserted is that this can be done to Mark as well, such that he casts it, the logs will show it landing, he spends energy and whatever as though it landed (because it did)... but because you were vanish-invulnerable at that instant, the spell does not actually apply to you, hence completely negating the effect. I cannot confirm that it works, myself, but I believe that is what's being asserted here.
So: vanishing to break targeting isn't useful (though doesn't really hurt anything, either). Feinting to reduce damage is useful if you're having healing issues. However, if it is in fact possible to vanish-immune and thus utterly negate a mark, that would be very useful indeed.
Originally Posted by Dyz
You can, in fact, Vanish-Immune his mark and he does not retarget and cast on someone else. Furthermore, it DOES deplete the Runic Power. I succeeded in using this tactic a few times last night in the 10M version. It is not necessarily needed, but we had alt/Friend healers. If anything, it is another way for a rogue to remain personally aware of his own survival and burden on the healers.
I managed to Vanish-immune his mark tonight in ICC 10. I even asked over vent if I had the mark to confirm with other people in the raid before giggling like a school girl and telling Saurfang Jr. to suck it. And nobody else got one... So yes, it is possible to negate one mark entirely if you are fortunate enough to be targeted and skillful enough in your timing.
I don't know if it makes a difference, but I was in a raid composition without MS aside from rogues, and I was the only one applying WP. After a few attempts someone mentioned his heals didn't seem reduced, so I switched to IP/DP and we killed him in that attempt much easier than in any other attempt prior. Maybe things just clicked on that attempt, but just thought I'd mention it anyway.. I can't remember seeing or reading anywhere that MS will reduce his self heals and I've looked at a few strats.
Edit: we used 2 tanks, with very quick taunts after debuff application
It does indeed reduce his healing. I have WoL parses showing his average healing and it's definitely 50% less (22k vs 11k) when using WP. Like other raids we have not had the luxury of having other Healing debuffs (in 10s) aside from my WP, so as Shaker said, I think it's pretty vital.
How important the healing debuff is would correlate with how quickly your tanks taunt when he applies his leech ability. Currently it looks like he's landing about 40 swings with the debuff up, per fight, for us. At 11k healing per swing, he's healing about 440k health for the fight. So, in order to offset that I'd have to do 440k more damage when switching to IP. For our raid, that's right around the break-even point from my quick calculations. So, if you're seeing numbers similar or higher than mine, then you probably NEED the healing debuff. If your tanks are switching more quickly and you are seeing less of the healing taking effect, then you can probably switch to IP and see greater benefit.
In 10 man, we have our tanks solo tank it with wound poison up. 2 heals, 1 tank and 7 dps.
We have melee take one add and ranged take the other. A shiv right before changing targets and I ensure wound/deadly stack stay up while I'm off the boss. We use a prot paladin hammer for the first stun and a kidney shot for the second, so we are back on boss within the 12 seconds needed to keep deadly up.
This was mostly done as our offtank has a boomkin offspec for the knock-back, though with split ranged/melee on the two adds, you don't even need that. He healed for around 1 mil- 1.5 mil but it makes it much easier on your healers during frenzy having a single tank. Especially if you don't have a beacon to cheese one of the marks.
In 25 man, we use wound as the hunters usually don't have full uptime on aimed shot due to adds. A few missed swings on the tradeoff more than makes up for the loss, especially since we're using a combat rogue for savage combat anyway. Particularly during the frenzy, it's helpful to have healing reduction up full time.
edit: Editing in-line here to stop disinformation. Saurfang's rune was hot-fixed to deal 10x healing rather than 5x, making single tank strategies unrealistic.
It does indeed reduce his healing. I have WoL parses showing his average healing and it's definitely 50% less (22k vs 11k) when using WP. Like other raids we have not had the luxury of having other Healing debuffs (in 10s) aside from my WP, so as Shaker said, I think it's pretty vital.
This is weird, I have 2 logs from yesterday, one showing his healing being reduced. The other one shows him healing 5x even though wound poison was on the entire fight.
This is weird, I have 2 logs from yesterday, one showing his healing being reduced. The other one shows him healing 5x even though wound poison was on the entire fight.
That does sound odd. Do you have links to those logs?
The timing to get an Immune Vanish its 0.4-0.2s before the cast ends, before it is too soon and it will target another people, between 0.2 et 0s its too late because of the server-client lag.
Here is what happened:
[20:10:08.530] Deathbringer Saurfang begins to cast Mark of the Fallen Champion
[20:10:09.761] Caane gains Stealth from Caane
[20:10:09.761] Caane gains Vanish from Caane
[20:10:09.761] Caane casts Vanish
Blood power got depleted and no one got the debuff.
Second cast:
[20:11:26.373] Deathbringer Saurfang begins to cast Mark of the Fallen Champion
12/14/09, 6:50 AM
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