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Vaelastrasz the Corrupt - Bolty - 01-09-2006
Now that Rag is down, Vael is no longer just the "fun thing to try," but our new First Kill Challenge.⢠Since I'm totally addicted to getting First Kills (greatest rush in the game, basically what I'm playing WoW for now), I want to get focused on this encounter.
Clearly, the tanks have the hard job here. DPS players basically just nuke away, with some aggro concerns for the rogues, but it's otherwise straightforward. Healers have one basic challenge: follow the tank transitions and get the heals on the current MT.
As mentioned before starting the runs, all healers should have the Mana Conserve option turned off in CTRA for the Vael encounter. If you're casting a 3-4 second heal on a player with only a 50 hp deficit, it should fly anyway. Overhealing doesn't generate aggro, and it's too important to keep that player topped off.
Speaking of aggro, I did not see any healers get aggro once in any encounter, except for when the tanks were all dead. Since overhealing doesn't draw aggro, constant PoH spamming isn't as bad as you might think. I'm not healing for 6000-8000 damage each cast, it's more like 1000-2000, with gigantic overhealing. If anyone's going to get aggro, it'll be the Druids, but I didn't see that happening. Blessing of Salvation's just too good.
Priests' Prayer of Healing spell is just a godsend in this fight. Since every member of the raid is taking constant fire damage, having a Priest in each group just spamming PoH keeps everyone (including the Priest themself) alive. Of course, it's rare to actually have eight Priests in the raid, so we have to make concessions. Between PoH casts, Priests should also contribute in some way, be it Mind Blasting Vael, or healing one of the tanks with a Flash Heal so as to help out the Druids.
Vael's fire AoE has the nasty effect of stuttering the heals that are firing. So, all heals cast by the raid members will take longer to cast than normal. Paladins are better with this if they're talented to have the 70% chance of uninterruption talent.
As we did last night, we moved Cleoboltra and Aleri, both Inspiration-spec'ed Priests, into two tank groups so that Inspiration could proc a lot (which it did) and give our tanks 25% more armor on a pretty consistent basis. It also helped to mitigate the damage the secondary tanks were receiving while waiting for their turn to be MT. Since I get a PoH off every 4 seconds or so (stuttering, remember, turns the 3 second cast into maybe 3.5-4), and Inspiration lasts 15 seconds, there's a good shot of keeping Inspiration up permanently on tanks.
Questions I have to our healers on the Jan 8th Vael try:
1) If a Priest isn't in a group to spam Prayer of Healing, can a Paladin keep the group alive well enough? We had Paladins in groups with DPS and a Paladin in a group with our four MT-healing Druids. Were you able to keep up with the incoming damage, especially since Vael's fire AoE can stutter your healing casts?
2) How can we manage tank transitions better? The last wipe of the night, Gnolack got hit with Burning Adrenaline. At that point, he was dead meat, and the healers who are tank healing needed to switch and go for the next tank in line. I think that happened for the most part. However, Seiki, the next tank, dropped like a rock when he went from 90% to around 20% health in one shot. When I saw that, I immediately thought "wipe." Seiki died a second later, and the tanks fell like dominoes.
3) Were the Druids breaking up their heals, so that maybe 2 Druids were using the shorter cast heal and 2 Druids were using the long-casting megaheal?
Tank transitions are the key. Just as the warriors are working out their transitions, we need to work out how to cleanly switch from the first tank to the next, and most of that is going to be on the Druids. The Priests will be tied up being PoH bots for this encounter. This is significant because Druid heals are a bit slower, and more based on anticipation of damage rather than reaction to damage (like Priest heals are good for). So, theoretically, big heals on the next tank should be starting up before he even gets aggro. That's pretty tough to manage. Considering the MT takes what seems like 1500-2000 DPS, heals have to be raining constantly on them.
Perhaps each Druid saving their Nature's Swiftness in turns for the tank transitions will be a huge help. So, theorycraft setup, shoot this down if it won't work for whatever reason:
As MT runs in to start the fight, heals are queuing up on him already. Remember, overhealing doesn't generate aggro, so it's ok to just slam the heals down on him even if he's at 100%. You have unlimited mana anyway. This isn't the hard part - by the end of the night, we were keeping Gnolack up very well and should be able to do so until he gets Adrenalined.
Transition 1: MT gets the death sentence by being Burning Adrenalined. CTRA has an announcement for this, so it's easy to see happening - plus, visually, you'll see the player burning alive. Druid 1 in rotation burns their Nature's Swiftness and waits for a damage spike to plant a gigantic heal on Tank 2. The other Druids begin queuing heals on Tank 2 and leave the MT to die, since it's inevitable anyway. MT dies. Tank 2 takes a huge damage spike, but Druid 1 slams him instantly with an enormous heal, and the other Druids' heals start raining in.
Transition 2: Tank 2 gets Burning Adrenalined. Druid 1's Nature's Swiftness is still on cooldown, of course, so it's Druid 2's turn. Druid 2 activates it and waits for the damage spike on Tank 3, while the other Druids start queuing up and raining down their heals on Tank 3. And so on, and so on.
Remember the Vael encounter is a maximum of 3 minutes. You either beat him in 3 minutes or you wipe. So your Nature's Swiftness won't have time to cool down; you have one use per run. Make em count. Save them for the tank transitions, when things are the most dicey and likely to fall apart.
If the tanks wind up losing the correct tank order, I think we're screwed. There's just not enough margin for error to allow the Druids to switch to a new tank (about 0.75-1.00 seconds, even for the best/fastest reaction time healers), cast their fastest heal (2.5-3.0 seconds due to Vael's stuttering), and keep the new tank alive. That's why when the tank rotation fails, the tanks die so fast it makes our heads spin. The incoming DPS on Vael's target is just too insane.
Any further ideas from the healers' perspective?
-Bolty
Vaelastrasz the Corrupt - Dozer - 01-09-2006
I'm not sure how the Paladin-Shaman difference somes into play here, but in the way we do VtC, the only priests that end up healing the tanks are the ones in their groups - the 2 tank groups look like: Tank, Tank, Warlock/Imp, Priest, Shaman(FR,STR,WF totems). the ~4 other Priests we bring go into each group, with our two best-geared/specced druids taking the last 2 groups.
All the other shamans/druids not healing their group have two jobs: keep FR totem down and heal the current tank. The 5-6 shamans and spare druids spamming lesser healing wave on the tank is more than enough to keep him alive.
The two real keys to the fight are:
1. Practice for the melee classes(rogues need to be able to FEEL the zone where they maximise DPS and stay off the top of the aggro list, and warriors need to KNOW exactly where they are on the aggro list, and time the transitions perfectly)
2. Luck with BA. If we get three priests BA'd in a row, it's a wipe, even now. A fight with 3 mages and a couple warlocks, however, gives you a huge advantage (One thing to not underestimate is the sheer amount of damage everyone can do while BA'd - get to your safe spot and blast away. This significant damage will turn the tide if your DPS is marginal to do the fight in < 3 minutes.)
Hope that helps a little bit =]
Vaelastrasz the Corrupt - Kevin - 01-09-2006
Dozer,Jan 9 2006, 04:04 PM Wrote:I'm not sure how the Paladin-Shaman difference somes into play here, but in the way we do VtC, the only priests that end up healing the tanks are the ones in their groups - the 2 tank groups look like: Tank, Tank, Warlock/Imp, Priest, Shaman(FR,STR,WF totems). the ~4 other Priests we bring go into each group, with our two best-geared/specced druids taking the last 2 groups.
All the other shamans/druids not healing their group have two jobs: keep FR totem down and heal the current tank. The 5-6 shamans and spare druids spamming lesser healing wave on the tank is more than enough to keep him alive.
The two real keys to the fight are:
1. Practice for the melee classes(rogues need to be able to FEEL the zone where they maximise DPS and stay off the top of the aggro list, and warriors need to KNOW exactly where they are on the aggro list, and time the transitions perfectly)
2. Luck with BA. If we get three priests BA'd in a row, it's a wipe, even now. A fight with 3 mages and a couple warlocks, however, gives you a huge advantage (One thing to not underestimate is the sheer amount of damage everyone can do while BA'd - get to your safe spot and blast away. This significant damage will turn the tide if your DPS is marginal to do the fight in < 3 minutes.)
Hope that helps a little bit =]
[right][snapback]98993[/snapback][/right]
Our tank groups were warrior, warrior, priest, paladin, imp totem (after we tried warrior, warrior, warrior, paladin, imp totem a couple of times).
The shaman and paladin differences become noticable in this fight though. Shaman have flash heal. Base lesser healing wave is 880 health per cast. Base flash heal is 885 health per cast and they get the same benefit from + healing gear. So there is no practical difference. Paladins 1.5 second cast heal, flash of light, even with blessing of light up is 420.5 health per cast for the base spell. You don't want to rely on their 2.5 second cast heal alone either. So you need to do clever things with your druids or have priests to do it, or what not.
As for the aggro. I'm not thinking it is as big a deal for DPS as people claim.
On our last attempt according to my numbers I ran at 154.3 DPS, another tank at 168.4, another at 141.8, a DPS warrior at 254.0, and two other tanks at 128.1 and 91.4. I did have burning adrenaline for a bit but that DPS makes sense for me with the weapon and gearing I have. Paper Doll show it at 84.0 DPS in defensive stance. Heroic Strike adds 138 damage per attack and my attacks are 1.5 (or faster when the claw procs) and I have a 10.65% crit chance in my Vael tanking gear. So without crits or an Eskhandar's proc I should pump out 118 DPS with just HS bonus damage and the weapon base is 48 DPS. Two of the 35 swings I got in were not HS but regular attacks (so I missed 2 jams on HS). This is all before armor of course.
Form here: http://www.lurkerlounge.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=6293
1. Shield Slam - 1950 total hate.
2. Revenge - 1370 total hate.
3. Sunder Armor - 1050 total hate
5. Heroic Strike - 890 total hate
- Regular physical damage in def stance (with defiance): 4.0 hate per point of damage.
- 1 Hate = 1 point of healing by a Priest with 20% threat reduction talent.
So if we look at that. My hate generation is
Damage: 150 x 4 = 600 hate/s (cut the DPS a little bit)
Heroic Strike: 890/1.5 = 593.33 hate/s (Eskhandar did proc a couple of times and that actually gets my attack down to 1.05 seconds)
Sunder Armor: 1050 hate/s (once a second with global cooldown lets call it 1000 H/s for missing a key now and then.
So ~2200 hate/s or 2200 healing per second that a priest can do if they have subtlety. This is why a healer really shouldn't be pulling aggro in that fight. And that is a bit lowballed for my hate generation. If I get fancy I could replace one of the sunders with a shield slam every 6 seconds that would up my DPS a little (by about 8 ) and give me a little boost to pure hate (about 150/s). Revenge is every 5 seconds as well but again with universal cooldown you have to replace a sunder with it so that could be thrown in there as well for a bit more hate boost (65.4 hate/s) but you are once again messing with timing and 2200 hate/s seems fine.
But unlimited HS (20 rage/s makes it unlimited) is why a high DPS fast weapon is so good and how with just the 30% hate reduction of salvation I took aggro form another warrior on the first attempt.
The run I lost aggro to another warrior in, I checked my data and I was trying to be fancy with shield slams and revenges in there and missed more HS chances and probably lost time on the other instant attacks. Keep it simple. I can do crazy hate generation in this fight with just HS and sunder so I stuck with that. The other warrior backed off on the next couple of attempts but I'm not sure they needed to now.
I get a 45% boost to hate per point of damage and 65% over warriors in battle or zerker stance. So for everyone else they should be doing 2.2 hate per damage point and battle/zerk warriors should be 1.4 since there is a 20% reduction in threat in those stances. I'm not sure what battle/zerk and defiance do to the innate hate of an attack like sunder armor though.
So that means a rogue, warlock, mage, druid, priest, etc should be able to do about 1000 DPS without pulling aggro from me in this fight and that is before salvation. A warlock hit 740.4 (got BA'd and had insta cast shadow bolts) and a rogue hit 406.7 no one else got above 400 in my numbers. Neither of them pulled aggro before a warrior died so it seems like the theorycraft fits the data even figuring in the salvation bonus the warlock was still ~518 DPS.
If my theorycraft holds I don't see how anyone but another warrior has any chance at aggro, salvation or not.
Two of our tanks have Bloodlord's Defender's I know. Those are 1.9 speed with pretty much the same DPS as Eskhandar's.
That would put them about 125 hate/s less than me all else being equal from the HS hate/s. I was running at about 500 attack power unbuffed.
Deathbringer being about 8 DPS more would be about 254 hate/s less just based on the HS hate/s difference and giving it 8 DPS more.
Anyway just giving some theorycraft to this encounter. Feel free to find the obvious errors I made that I'm not seeing.
But if you put a really fast weapon like an Eskhandar's on the tank and they just spam Heroic Strike and sunder armor I don't see how another class can do enough damage to get aggro. As you can see a slower weapon like a deathbringer really starts to drop that hate generation as you can't apply heroic strike as fast. 254 H/S is about 115 DPS for another class.
Vaelastrasz the Corrupt - Cybit - 01-09-2006
BA can be controlled, or so some say.
According to a good friend of mine on Gorgonnash, its the aggro order of everyone else besides the tanks. Not the aggro list, the order. So his guild does it like this
1) Tank starts the fight
2) As soon as a tank lands a shot, all the warlocks hit him with corruption/CoA
3) Proceed as normal
Apparently, this means he will take out the warlocks first.
Worth a try I think?
Vaelastrasz the Corrupt - Ashkael - 01-09-2006
Heya,
My guild defeated this encounter a few weeks ago, so I figure it can't hurt to comment on what strats we used for the fight and how we handled it.
First of all, the basics of the encounter:
Burning Adrenaline (BA) - You probably know how this works, but I guess it doesn't hurt to regurgitate it here. Basically, every 15 seconds a random mana user gets hit by BA, and every 45 seconds the person at the top of Vael's aggro list gets hit by BA. The person inflicted by BA gets all his damage increased by 100% and his abilities become instant cast, but after 15 seconds he dies and explodes. It is extremely important to note that you only explode after the 15 second timer expires. If you get killed by Vael before the 15 seconds go through, you won't explode.
Essence of the Red - 3 minute "debuff" that Vael casts on your raid. It essentially gives your rogues infinite energy, your mana users infinite mana, and your warriors infinite rage.
Chain Cleave - Vael's cleave attack works like a chain lighting (it jumps from player to player till it cannot jump anymore, like the cleave attack used by the Lava Reavers in Molten Core). Due to this, you need to make sure there is enough distance between the current MT and the melee DPS and offtanks to avoid any risks of a chain cleave. An accidental chain cleave on the melee DPS (which can potentially spread to the ranged DPS and healer camp) is probably enough to end the attempt prematurely.
Fire Breath - Standard fire breath attack, no one but the current MT should get hit by this.
With his abilities out of the way, there's 3 prerequisites that your raid group must meet if you really want to see Vael's head on a pike. Those are: 1) proper fire resistance, 2) proper tank transitions, and 3) good, controlled DPS.
Fire Resistance - Every single person in your raid group must have a minimun of 150 fire resistance unbuffed. This is extremely easy to accomplish, since your raid group should have by now some Tier 1 equipment with FR from MC, and you can fill up the rest with crafted items (the wizardweave and volcanic lines of cheap FR gear come to mind). Remember to tell the mana classes to gimp their mana pool as much as possible and go with all the FR (and stamina) they can possibly get. Heck, have your hunters/rogues/druids wear some Wizardweave if needed, just make sure you have the FR. Use the /raresist check built into CTRaid to see if your raid group meets the correct FR requirements. If they don't meet it, don't even try. Also, the four warriors that will be tanking Vael should be at some 250+ FR unbuffed.
Tank Transitions - As you know by now, having the target that is highest on Vael's aggro list get hit by BA every 45 seconds essentially means you need 4 warriors for this fight (if Vael is not dead by the time the four warrior dies due to BA, then you need more DPS because the Essence of the Red debuff will have expired by then). Probably the easiest way to do this is to make sure all warriors have the same spec, and have them run in one after the other with a 5 second interval and start sundering and spamming their aggro generating moves.
As soon as the current MT gets hit by BA, have the next MT in line move to the front where MT1 is, careful not to get cleaved in the way to the front (possibly resulting in the cleave chaining to the rest of the melee DPS). At this point, continue healing the MT with BA for a couple more seconds so he can dish out as much damage as he can, and then let him get killed by Vael before BA expires. Remember, you only explode if the 15 seconds on BA run its course, not if you get killed by Vael before that.
Now, I play horde, and the main tank transitions wouldn't go smoothly 100% of the time (that is, the tank that was supposed to get the aggro wouldn't get it, or a DPS'r would get it instead). The 1.9 patch introduced the Tranquil Air totem though and it makes it hell of a lot easier to make sure the tanks stay at the top of the aggro list. If you play alliance, make full use of that Pally aura that reduces threat on all the melee DPS classes.
I think you mentioned it up there, but what truly makes or bearks this fight is the tank transitions. As long as they go smoothly, Vael will deffinitively go down.
DPS - DPS needs to be pretty good since Vael has to be down before the fourth tank dies. For this particular fight, rogues with the aggro reduction aura spamming feint and vanishing after the 1st MT transition are the best possible source of DPS you can get. Same deal with warriors, since Vael starts off at 20% he will get into execute range real fast, but you gotta make sure they won't pull aggro. If anything, you should soulstone your rogues since they are the only class that can do anything in this fight after losing the Essence of the Red debuff. If your rogues/hunters keep spamming their aggro reduction skills and mages/warlocks are specced for aggro reduction (master demonologist, arcane subtlety), they won't ever pull aggro. If one of them gets BA, they should go to the little corridor leading to the stairs and do as much DPS on Vael before they blow up (frostbolt, aim shot, shadowbolt spam).
With those key points out of the way, there's the issue of healing. A single priest (or even a single Shaman in the case of horde) can keep up his group alive just fine by spamming Prayer of Healing when needed, provided his group meets the FR standards. If your priests are specced into subtlety, it's a pretty good idea to have them Flash the current MT in between casts of prayer of healing. Aggro shouldn't really be an issue since priests won't need to be desperatly spamming heals on their groups due to them having good FR. On top of this, there should be some 4 or 5 healers assigned to the current MT at all times. If some of those assigned healers get hit by BA, the raid leader should assign replacements on the fly.
Once again, the fight is not really THAT difficult. If DPS is steady and FR standards are met, the only thing that can possibly wipe your group is a bad MT transition.
Vaelastrasz the Corrupt - Skandranon - 01-09-2006
Bolty,Jan 9 2006, 09:30 AM Wrote:2) How can we manage tank transitions better? The last wipe of the night, Gnolack got hit with Burning Adrenaline. At that point, he was dead meat, and the healers who are tank healing needed to switch and go for the next tank in line. [right][snapback]98961[/snapback][/right]
No, no, wait. Stop. Go back.
Burning Adrenaline takes off 5% of max hp per second. All it does is make the MT's health bar spikier - it isn't an instant death sentence. If your MT has enough hp, all that will happen is that his life will drop to more dangerous levels. You should certainly be able to keep him up for at least the first 10 seconds of BA (50% max hp). After that, it's a case of throwing heals and praying, but there's no sense in letting the BA'ed MT die early. Your warriors are your most precious resources in this fight. Especially after Vael hits 19%, the BA'ed MT can BA Execute for ridiculous amounts of damage - something worth holding on to. Yes, someone should be assigned to top off the next tank in line, but immediately swapping on BA deprives you of benefiting from BA's "good" side and gains you little benefit - the next tank in line shouldn't need all the healers moving to him or her just yet.