For when we work on Flying Bird of Flame
Found this out by accident last night
When Alysrazor gets up from the ground at 50% energy and starts her cleave of doom, the Tank that taunts first had DCed, so our mage used images to lose threat out of habbit.
it turned out mirror images are immune to the cleave.
So we just have our mage use MI when ever she hits 50% energy, and makes healing very easy since you dont have to heal tanks anymore, just the raid.
Heroic Lord Rhyolith
I know it seems like everyday something new is suggested or changed. We probably would already make this change for tonight given the circumstances. But I really think we should try out two ranged classes on the legs tonight in place of Ansum and Bauser. I have read numerous posts where people say they let ranged do it and don't have any issues steering him. It's at least worth a shot to change things up for a few pulls to see if it helps in any way. Of course this is just my opinion.
Last edited by Vikrum; 07-27-2011 at 09:09 AM. Reason: spelling fail
I think we have gone over this before. We need the constant DPS from melee on the legs, even though it is reduced, to get the health down to 50% to be ready for our burn strat when Rhyo's armor is 40% or lower. Ranged are busy dealing with Fragment spawns and switching to Sparks to burn them immediately which lessens the healing requirement on Vik. Melee would only be able to help with Fragments if we switch roles now. That means that ranged would still have to switch to Sparks as needed and we would have little or no steering at that point. I think we have to keep things the same and try Kull's suggestion to burn Rhyo when he is at 50% health and 40% armor.Originally Posted by Vikrum
Now onto turning Rhyo. We have seen him take some really hard turns right after a Concussive Stomp and I think I know why. I have read a number of strategies and different posts since last week. I found a couple of posts that suggested that Rhyo samples leg damage every second to determine his turning amount. So, if we do more damage to the left leg at the 25 second mark then he will show the amount of turn at the 26 second mark. If this is the case, Concussive Stomp is a 3 second cast which means he will take 3 readings of leg damage during a stomp. After the stomp, the turning bar will show what the total turn is over those 3 seconds and apply it. Technically speaking, this makes sense because Rhyo is not turning during the stomp. He technically stops all forward progress to stomp.
At one point, we tested the amount of time it takes Rhyo to walk straight after we get a full turn. Iirc, it was about 5-6 seconds. So, the rule of thumb should be to DoT each leg and direct dps one leg to turn him. I think this is what we have been doing for the most part so far. The only thing we should try is to stop direct dps 5 seconds before a stomp and see if that helps our control better. If we don't want to waste any dps time then the other option is to just pick one leg to focus on during each stomp so we know exactly where he will be headed out of the stomp. This would prevent us from losing any dps time and would give us a little better control.
I am tired of the Rhyo mechanic so I hope the burn method and my suggestions work.
Notes for Baleroc:
After recording our commentary video for this fight and our general observances from a number of wipes the other night due to healing issues, I've come to realize we're making a fundamental mistake on this fight that is entirely unnecessary: We are not letting Torment stack high enough.
There's a moment in the video (around the 4:30 mark if you care to see it once it's uploaded) where I'm able to gain 27 stacks of Vital Spark (going from 30 to 57) in basically 15 seconds of healing. And I wasn't even doing that great a job or doing anything special, just casting my big heals to keep Ansum up. However, because Ansum was covering an extra "shift" due to Dougall accidentally getting hit the round prior, this let Ansum get up to 18 stacks, and of course since Vital Spark stacks increase based on the Torment stack, we get this huge bump in stacks from healing him. With a Shamanistic Rage and a HoSac from Kain, he's able to survive that 18 stacks without any issue at all really.
Looking at the logs, each Shard casts Torment either 25 or 26 times total before it despawns, so we can definitely drop our "Shard Rotation Groups" down to two people each rather than three. Moreover, if we use the right people and the right cooldowns (or perhaps even resist trinkets which would be ideal timing for this), we can really push the stacks on one player very high.
Here is a simple table that shows how the stacks climb with Torment -- based on a 2-sec cast heal, which I know is not the average but it works as a ratio as well.
Obviously 100,000 damage per second at the 26-stack mark would be far too crazy to handle without insane cooldown rotations, but we can easily manage by splitting it between two people. If done evenly at 13 seconds each, the total Vital Spark stacks gained would be 32 (16 per person healed). However, it is more efficient to keep the Torment on one person stacking as long as possible -- for example, splitting the stacks at 18-8 means a total VS count of 41, while a 20-6 split is 45 stacks and a safer 16-10 split is 37 total stacks. Compare those to our typical method now which is basically 10-10-6, which gives 29 stacks, and clearly there's a stark contrast that we should be able to capitalize on.
Therefore, I think having two DPS use the TB resist trinkets to be our primary Torment soakers would pretty easily allow us to utilize a 18-8 or 20-6 split without too much trouble, considering the trinket halves the damage taken for 10 seconds, and that in the latter half of the soak plus a personal cooldown should be plenty.
Flip the Script
Even going with a two-person team method, I also think we should actually reverse the order of our Torment stack teams. That is, right now we order them starting with the best damage mitigators early to soak more stacks and end with the weaker mitigators later on. However, similar to the Sinestra Wrack dispel strategy I laid out, it is always better and easier to allow the process to "naturally" fade without human interaction, especially when doing something more difficult.
In the context of Torment team members swapping, I mean this: It will be far better to have the lesser-stack player be first and the bigger-stack player be last, such that any minor timing mistake on that transition is less likely to cause a death. For example, with the current system of big stacks first, assume for a moment 10 stacks was the max we could heal and 12 would kill someone. If there is a transition error at the 10-stack mark and someone goes to 12+ accidentally, the only recourse is their stack keeps climbing unless they are saved by the next member. However, if that same situation happens on the back end of the rotation, such as the last player stepping in a few seconds too early, we know the worst possible situation is that player will hit their 12-stacks but there will be no follow-up 13th stack, since the Shard will expire.
Thus, with this new method, we should do something like a 6-20, where the first person only gets to 6 stacks, and the second and last person takes over for the 7th-26th stacks. Or 8-18 if we decide that's better -- either way any slight timing mistake of a second or two on either end will not lead to a death as that person is our spam healed/cooldowned target and the shard will expire very quickly after the expected moment either way.
Torment Team Positions
Another thing that Torment team members should focus on/update is their positioning when initially taking and then trading off the Torment. Right now, it's pretty much "everyone stands back and runs in when their warning tells them", but there's a much more efficient method in my opinion, and a very basic sketch looks like this:
With the Shard at the back left, our first Torment soaker (the 6-stack or 8-stack player) in the yellow icon runs next to the shard as normal when it spawns and waits there until his 6th/8th stack. Meanwhile, the second team member moves into position just to the outside edge of the current soaking player (in this case, to the right, so the other person is between them and the shard obviously).
Now, when our 6-stack player reaches their stack count, they simply run out, automatically placing the next soaker in position without requiring movement from anyone else. This player can remain stationary the entire time until their soak is complete.
All in all I think it's a pretty simple system and would allow our two-man teams to easily work well together and would only require one person per team to actively worry about stack counts/timings for movement.
Healing Stack Efficiency
Chuk/Kain, you both should really sit down and math out/think through the most efficient and timely method for your particular class/spec to gain Vital Spark stacks, if you haven't done so already. By this I mean, I started to think about it for my own class, in terms of this simple question: What is the maximum number of direct heals can I cast on Tormented players within my ~30 second window?
When I first did this fight, I just did the obvious and cast my big heal (Healing Touch) over and over. Then I realized I could utilize my Regrowth when mana permits for faster heals and thus more stacks per second. Then from there, I started thinking about timing my Regrowths to maximize my haste proc, which gives me 15% haste for 15 sec once a minute. Then I thought about whether it is worth using 3 GCDs to get Rejuv on 3 targets, which lowers my Nourish cast time a great deal. And so on...
As a Druid, I've discovered the following which I think will be the most stacks per second method (short of wasting mana on Regrowth spam):
1. If no Torment stacks are active when my 30-sec Torment heal phase begins, pre-HoT Rejuv 3 times.
2. Start with a Regrowth to proc 15% haste if available.
3. Swiftmend the RG target.
4. If Torment stacks are less than 10, spam Nourish while 3x Rejuvs remain active.
5. If Torment stacks are 10+, spam Healing Touch, mixed with a Regrowth/Swiftmend when cooldown is available.
6. Use Clearcasting procs on Regrowth as required.
My point is, this sort of setup and planning is a far cry from what I was originally doing, and it would've been easy to continue just spamming the one spell like I did for our first kill, but I realized it's better to figure it out and practice it now in preparation for when it matters on Heroic.
So, just something to think about...
On Baleroc, I've read about shadow priests using dispersion at 19 stacks to actually burn the entire duration of a crystal. Here's a video of 2 shadow priests using this method and just rotating on the crystals. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RQCpCsAb34 Just thought I'd throw that out there since that is something we have in our arsenal.
If you expect a kick in the balls and get a slap in the face, then it's a victory!
That's pretty sexy. We can definitely do that for every third shard to give a really nice extra boost.
Heroic Beth
So with Burning Acid being the 2nd most damaging spell in this encounter I am trying to figure out what our advantages are for having Kain up top as opposed to down below helping with taunts?
Obviously Kull could taunt but that takes him out of healing form yes? Just seems Chuk could manage healing me up top just as well and that would allow us to keep Kain down below to help with taunting. Not to mention aren't the downstairs guys missing out on fire resist aura due to us (paladins) both being up top?
Heh just realized I posted the exact strategy we ended up using well before we ever tried him once. Go me!
We went full circle(pun intended) with Rhyo strats! Woot!
We just had to keep going right to get back to the right strategy.
But mine was never tried until the very end lol. Which happened to be the working one.
Although I don't think it's looked at as being mine; which it isn't. But it was posted and brought up in Mumble the first night of tries.
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