3 tanks 6 healers 5 healers all healers except the Holy Pally with RF in melee Buff with Amp Magic ranged spread at least 12' apart frost traps and snares/slows ready for hounds, Stuns, etc Shockwave will help too when they first spawn MDs to Boomkin ready for hounds (rogue tricks+FoK) Hurricane casting and Typhoon knockback ready for hounds Holy Pally with RF up and stacked on Boomkin Melee who use AoE (Ret/Fury...) make sure you know when hounds are gonna pop Don't battle-rez/anhk people with the mark debuff 1 tank should be fine for Saurfang (stack avoidance over stam) Need at least 2 tanks to swap when debuffed Bloodlust early Enrages at 30% so have CDs ready Hounds are dps priority for ranged above all else. Make sure you run from them. Don't get hit! Can Iceblock etc out of Boiling Blood
Blood Beasts were the biggest issue. Tanks were getting agro from them, and that's bad. We had a lack of snares, which is bad.
Second issue was healing the Mark victim(s). When DS marks someone, everytime he hits with a melee attack, they take damage. 4kish? Only 2 ways to deal with that. Tanks stack more avoidance (dodge+parry) (block doesn't help) so they don't get as much, and/or have pro healers. In 10-man, we can't have 3 healers, it would hurt the dps too much. So the healers will need to deal with 2-3 people with the Mark.
The real key though is controlling the Blood Beasts. Tanks don't agro them. Ranged make sure they are snared, stunned, etc and that they die ASAP.
Our 10-man attempts started to get better. After reviewing the logs, I think it's very doable with our current groups.
I'm going to call fight #3 our best attempt.
Tweaks and changes we either need or should do:
#1 MT needs to call out for a taunt when they get the Rune of Blood ASAP. and then stop attacking for a few. DS healed for over 1.5 million just from hitting a tank with the debuff.
#2 Spread out. (except for RF pally/boomkin combo) The Blood Nova is going to hit someone anyway. So no real reason to stack in melee as long as everyone stays at least 12' apart. And when the Blood Beast agro'd on someone in melee and they moved a bit, they usually got hit with Blood Nova and chained it to everyone else in melee. (see next post for positioning ideas)
#3 Mori took the most hits from Blood Beasts. Do whatever you can to avoid getting agro when the beasts pop. Fade is 30 sec CD, Beasts come out every 40 seconds. Use that. BMW & Jovi were second. If we're spread out, it should be much easier. Jovi fade, BMW frost nova, iceblock, avoid Blink unless you know exactly where you'll end up.
#4 Healers be ready for the Mark. Cows was the only one who ended up getting a Mark, and he was taking 4k each time the boss hit someone. Make sure whatever add-on you use for healing has the Mark debuff highlighted. Might also be helpful if a DPS gets the 1st or second Mark to just let them die.
Healing:
PW:S accounted for 30% Flash heal and PoM each did 17% Penance was at 13% --------------------------- FoL = 62% Beacon = 30%
This fight is definitely a DPS race, so keeping it at 2 heals/2 tanks is likely the way to go.
We were pretty close to getting him down in the late group last night. We saw him at 24% on our last attempt before he enraged.
We had Coffs go ele for his thunderstorm knockback and root specialized earthbind totem. That left Gamma and I to heal.
Healing on the tank is rather trivial even when he has built up a lot of blood power. Healing on the raid is rather trivial also. I kept everyone shielded and threw out some heals as needed.
On our last attempt before enrage, he only reached 100% blood power once in the fight. When he reset to zero and put the mark on someone, I just let him die.
I'm pretty sure both 10 man groups will see him down next week. In 25 man, I'd say we still have our hands full with LM and will probably see a roadblock when we get to the Lady also.
After reviewing the logs, I see there is no real point in stacking the ranged into melee. It also was causing one of our healers to get heal agro from the beasts when the spawned.
I still think having the most likely person to get agro straight back to have a "defined kite path" for the beasts is important. So ideally have a Boomkin & a Holy pally with RF standing straight back. Then have the 2 most likely to pull agro from dps on either side of those 2. The 2nd healer can be somewaht closer to the boss, but generally in the middle to be in range of everyone. Everyone else should form a V pattern with the RF pally at the tip. This will allow them to back up if they have a beast coming for them. (or something similar)
Attached is a little diagram to show what I'm talking about. Red dots are dps, green are heals, 2 tanks and a melee up top. A healer somewhat central but offset to make it easy to see if the beasts are coming for him or going to the Pally.
I've read that the beasts will always spawn where we've seen them, regardless of where the boss is. If true, it will be easier to tank the boss at the top of the stairs, so the tanks can use whatever abilities they want to without fear of agro on beasts.
I had heal aggro a few times. Healers should be running omen for this fight. When you see the red letters on your screen spelling AGGRO, stop healing and start kiting. The tank will survive with one less healer healing.
If I can do it as a priest (I have no snare or speed boost) then anybody can do it.
The key to this fight is nobody being hit by the blood beasts. Ever.
Nick, your diagram has a healer standing in melee range (which I'm assuming will be me). Can I stay out of melee range (where all the blood beasts spawn)? I faded and still was unable to shake the blood beasts around the 50% marker.
For PW:S, is there a macro or hotkey I can setup to select and rotate me through a list of people? Tab scrolls me through enemies, surely their is something to scroll me through party members.
For PW:S, is there a macro or hotkey I can setup to select and rotate me through a list of people? Tab scrolls me through enemies, surely their is something to scroll me through party members.
What Add-On do you use for healing? Healbot and Grid should both show all the health bars for the entire raid. Then you just click whatever mouse button you have assigned to PW:S down each bar.
The green dot in the center is the second healer. You can position anywhere as long as it's at least 12' away from anyone else. It will be helpful if you're not directly between the other healer and the Beast, so you can tell who they're running to.
It might be worthwhile for us to just assign 2 ranged to each beast and have them Snare/Nuke/Stun them. That might also avoid healing agro. They seemed to die quick enough... What do you guys think?
I don't think there should be confusion as to who they are running after if everyone enables omen for this fight, healers included. (dps should always have it enabled anyways)
When AGGRO in all red appears on your screen, it's time to start moving.
Nick, 2 dps should be fine. I was watching Melvala and Fireshiv get them down very quickly.
Addons really do serve a useful purpose in top tier raids and should be exploited to their fullest.
People need to get out of the mindset that they can skate by without them. We aren't running Naxx anymore. Everyone swears up and down that they run with DBM enabled, but I'm of the opinion that a large number of you are bullshitting.
Last night on the faction champs NOBODY interrupted the warlock all THREE times she hellfired. I ran in and feared. If you all run DBM like you say you do, it flashes a big warning on your screen that the warlock is hellfiring! It also shows the cooldown timer for the warrior's bladestorm ability which didn't claim any lives last night, but in the past usually takes out at least 5 people.
This fight is a prime example (as are all of them in some way). You get timers for all the boss's cooldowns so you should always know when to expect him to perform an ability before he does it and BE READY! Everyone should know when the bone spikes are coming, the bloodbeasts etc. NO ONE should rely on anyone to call these things out.
Run with the required addons! Turn up your game sound since the bosses will usually always say some catch phrase when they do certain things. Lord Marrowgar on the bone spikes: "Stick around"
The point of this long rant being: if you need your hand held to the point of waiting for people to tell you on vent that something is happening, then you will be reacting too late and should not be raiding in ICC.
Download and install the damn addon, even if it is just DBM and omen. Disable the shit you don't need when it's time to raid if you got too much stuff on your screen. It doesn't matter how "cool" your screen looks if you're dead or not doing your job. Some addons don't play nice with each other, so get used to raiding with a different UI than you normally run with.
Was the boss tanked offcenter? Were the Bloodbeast still spawning in the middle if so?
Were the Beasts focused 1 at a time, or did you have assigned DPS for each?
Did melee stay on the boss fulltime?
Did Gamma have RF up?
How close were the ranged to the boss?
I can answer only a little bit of this. Melee was on boss full time. Don't know where the ranged where at or the healy details. As for the beasts spawn point... to me it seems as if where ever Saurfang is he'll spawn adds in opposite corners of his position-one in front of him and then one behind. Rip and Rune held him basically in the center of the doorway. I was dropping earthbind totem right before beasts would spawn and once they were out of my vision I would go back to strength of earth... old fashioned totem-twisting there. The melee AOE was kept to a minimum and rarely did the adds stick around by the boss. We hit bloodlust at about 25% health.
This is a really easy fight for the melee... imho. Great job to the healers and ranged here!
Was the boss tanked offcenter? Were the Bloodbeast still spawning in the middle if so?
Were the Beasts focused 1 at a time, or did you have assigned DPS for each?
Did melee stay on the boss fulltime?
Did Gamma have RF up?
How close were the ranged to the boss?
Boss was tanked at the top of the stairs (back a little) and the beasts spawned near him like Thunder said.
Ranged were me and shiv on one side and jovion and mel on the other. We didn't mark or specifically focus fire the beasts, we just killed them quick. If they got too close Mel would nova or I would thunderstorm. Rune was also using chains of ice and the ocassional deathgrip (or taunt from Rip) to manage them.
We weren't quite at max range, but we were a ways back. The beasts rarely made it even close - the switches were very fast every time.
Sentinels of Shadow
Dalaran
