Illorien, Rena, and I took a 10-man crew back into ICC Wednesday night with hopes of getting through the lower spire in its entirety for the first time. We've managed to have the same core group for each of our runs, with the last 2-3 slots a bit of a swinging door amongst our guildmates, and for reference, this is the crew we were running with Wednesday:
Tanks (2)
Myself and Illorien (DK)
Heals (3)
Rena and Dendorian (Both Holy Paladins) and Recom (Tree)
DPS (5)
One each Warrior, Hunter, Mage, Warlock, and Elemental Shaman.
We still semi-wiped a couple times on the trash leading up to Marrowgar - those Deathbound Wards are brutal when they spawn in the middle of trying to clear other trash. We made it through to him in under an hour, though and two-shotted him. It probably would have been a 1-shot but one of our healers got hugged by him during 2 bone storms in a row, getting backed into a corner and simultaneously cold-flamed and whirlwinded.
We pushed through to Deathwhisper, and 2-shotted her as well. We've gotten our add strategy down to a science, left our Shaman on the boss full-time, and had no issues whatsoever with the add part of the fight. Our wipe occurred because we didn't really understand about the random ghosts that spawn and target a raid member - personally I'd never noticed them before, probably because we had to move her enough due to her death and decay that they never really did anything to our melee. This run, however, one decided to spawn in hugging our tree, followed by one hugging Illorien. The second run we avoided that and downed her easily.
Although I didn't talk about it much, last week we made it to the Gunship Battle but had issues with it, which was strange because we had 1-shotted it the first time. I went into a bit more explanation of the fight this time, had a little better strategy, and also had a better plan for holding the adds on our boat. There was no issue at all this time and the Skybreaker had nearly 250k hp left when Orgrim's Hammer fell from the sky.
To go into a little more detail, previously we had both cannons focusing on the rocketeers in the back of the Hammer, and had not asked our ranged DPS to try to kill the axe throwers. This was a mistake - the axe throwers get more powerful over time if they aren't killed - so this time we put our Warlock and Mage in the cannons, and had the one on the left, with the clear view of the back of the boat, target the rocketeers, while the other cannon focused on killing the axe throwers. Our healers and ranged stayed near the front edge of the boat, and our raiding party consisted of Illorien and Rena, the Shaman and the Hunter.
We cleared that with enough time for four or five shots at Deathbringer Saurfang, and while we had seen the fight once before, we had only really had time for one shot and hadn't learned much from it.
So I explained the fight again and had everyone spread out. Illorien, Chelm, and I were of course on the boss, and from my left to right we had the Mage, Paladin, Warlock, Tree, Shaman, Paladin, Hunter. I'm not sure about that spread, but it seemed like a good idea at the time, and put everybody in range of at least 2 Healers.
After a wipe or two we had the tree stay in caster form and try to help with DPS and CC, and we seemed to do okay with that. Our best effort had him down to nearly 2.5M (or roughly 25%) before he enraged, and he got off at least 2 Mark of the Fallen Champion each time. I've had folks suggest we try to 1-heal it. I'm not sure if that's the best idea but it's something we may explore in the future.
I'm still running through the fight in my head, trying to determine where we need to shift our strategy or work on execution, because he was still getting blood power too quickly, although we've gotten pretty good at controlling the blood beasts.
We may try to get together again on the weekend and give it another shot.
I had intended to chat about Halls of Reflection, but this developed into enough of a post on its own so I'll touch on this later. I hope you enjoyed, and I'll see you on the flip side!
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2 years ago
We three-healed it the first time, but now we go 2heal the whole way because the Plagueworks have a steep DPS requirement and my slacking guildmates aren't up for that challenge :p
ReplyDeletesaurfang is defenitly 2heal, no discussion, as you need to get him over and done with before he enrages. With the raid composition you mention above it shouldn't be a problem with kiting the blood beasts, if he gets too much power it's because people are getting meleed by them. one suggestion, that worked for us, is to make sure the hunter and the mage aren't on the same side, for example get the three ranged to take the left blood beast, one pally whacks the right blood beast with a hammer of the righetous and when that wears off the hunter is standing there ready to trap and kite it until the other guys are done nuking the left one.
One of the other things that we weren't doing that I've seen just about everybody mention is that we weren't letting the first Mark of the Fallen Champion die.
ReplyDeleteBy the end we'd gotten pretty good at controlling the blood beasts... our druid waited till they were out of melee range and then rooted one of them while everybody burned the other, then they took out the second... So, I'm not certain that the issue wasn't elsewhere. Trying to pay attention to everything at once might have meant I wasn't as quick on taunting off the other tank, and might have meant I messed up and mauled at the wrong time (glyph of maul... I'm planning to bring some replacements next time to get that out of there; I meant to bring them this time but I'm a fail druid)... and I really couldn't tell if we were staying spread out properly or not. And one of our pallys was doing all he could to help with CC, hammers and taunts and such.
I'm sure we'll get it, we just have to get everything hammered out and then EXECUTE. Some of our folks have had to learn/relearn skills they haven't had to use in quite some time, if ever, and some of our folks are simply much better at straight DPS than they are at utility. It'll come.
Sounds like you guys are getting a pretty good handle on things. One little trick we use that might help with the Wardens is your warlock's Eye of Kilrogg. That little bugger is very handy for tripping the traps and allowing you to take on the big guys one by one, easy as pie.
ReplyDeleteFor the blood beasts, try a little Avenger's Shield action from your healers. I know it sounds suicidal, but with distance, the slow from the Shield/traps, and a fast burn, they should never touch your pallies.
The timing on aoe abilities is a pain with Saurfang. I have the same glyph, and I have to time my Mauls carefully so as not to make a special new friend. But your technique is sound, and with a little polish and a steady group that knows the fight, you'll be zooming to the Blood Wing in no time :)
Good luck!
@Matheo: We can't really use an Eye to check an area until we've cleared each little group of trash, and that's been the issue.... Our standard approach is to have the tanks scoot in the room and run around a bit in the area that won't pull a group, to make sure it's clear for the group to follow, then we start down one side, clear a group at a time, and have the DPS back off while Illorien and I run around and try to trip the traps. Wash, rinse, repeat around the room. What causes a problem is when we're dealing with the group in the middle. We pile up behind one of the columns and LOS to get those spiders to move close together, without us having to charge into the middle of them. But occasionally (like wed) one of the traps is very close to where we are pulling to, but not close enough to trip until we're engaged with the group. Those Wards are taunt-immune, so if we can't get aggro IMMEDIATELY, they usually will smack a couple DPS or a Healer and then it's run for the door time. That probably would have been it - then we just pull the Ward to the front edge of the room and burn him out - but for some reason when we pulled him to the front of the room, that group of adds charged in, too. The second time, we were able to control the madness long enough for the Ward to go down, and then it was cake.
ReplyDeletePerhaps, though... at least as a time saver, when Illorien and I are trying to check the room, we can bring an Eye with us. Or maybe one of these times we'll convince one of our rogues to come along.
you know what, i'll actually post a blog entry about the exact way we pull the trash leading up to lord spin-a-lot with minimal casualities.
ReplyDelete(also know as it-worked-for-me-but-your-mileage-may-wary)
http://mekapedia.blogspot.com/2010/01/how-i-shot-web-or-more-like-lower-spire.html
EA's Guild Leader (who has been out for awhile for personal reasons) took a group into ICC 10 on Sunday and got through Saurfang... apparently they had a shaman or a balance druid and just knocked the bloodbeasts off the platform...
ReplyDelete