Vael

[Arnulf]

You don't need the talent. Interrupts lower the duration, not the DPS. Since mana is no concern, cast it again when the duration runs out.

I haven't seen Vael, but I've read of mages using Arcane Explosion there since it's higher DPS than Arcane Missiles.

O.O

Arcane Explosion? Don't you have to go near him for that? How do you avoid the chain-cleaving? (Same goes for Holy Nova)

What's your positioning? Ours is MT is in front of the throne. Warriors and rogues are on the left side of Vaelastrasz near the hind legs to avoid his chain-cleave. The rest of the raid is positioned on the floortile with the X.

[TheDragoon]

Of course lately we've only been using 2 or 3 tanks for the whole fight. It's been awhile since we've gotten to #4 unless something goes wrong.

But when we were learning the fight for the first time, when we had no one in the raid who had killed Vael, we were pretty concerned about tank order and we practiced to make sure we did have the order so that the healers and tanks could be more responsive. It helped. After pretty much everyone was used to the fight and had more experience with other fights that required flexibility like that we didn't care about it nearly as much.

Yeah, when we started out we definitely were working to hold a good order because we had to. Once we got the strategies down and started improving our gear it became less necessary to execute everything flawlessly and so we've slowly shifted toward more fluidity. However, we could never have done that without the experience of winning this fight so many times and the gear for all members of the raid that brings increased survivability, increased healing and increased DPS output.

[Magicbag]

We finally got past him last night. Execute spam was the key. I'm really happy we were able to progress past this annoying bottleneck in just 15 attempts. Getting Razorgore down was much more difficult (we ended up with a pretty unconventional method, but we're able to drop him every time now). Thanks for all the advice. Looking forward to making progress in BWL.
-MB

[Mavfin]

We finally got past him last night. Execute spam was the key. I'm really happy we were able to progress past this annoying bottleneck in just 15 attempts. Getting Razorgore down was much more difficult (we ended up with a pretty unconventional method, but we're able to drop him every time now). Thanks for all the advice. Looking forward to making progress in BWL.
-MB

Congrats! Now you get to learn the fun that is the suppression room!:D

[Tal]

Big congrats!

[MongoJerry]

Targeting about 150 fire resistance for your raid is good. While you're learning the encounter, PoH is good to use (cast PW:Shield on yourself first to not get stuttered so much). Eventually, the priests can use Holy Nova if they want to if they are in groups willing to bunch up near Vael, but I wouldn't bother with that while your raid is learning the encounter. Priests shouldn't have to spam PoH either. I throw out a heal or holy smite or two in between each one.

Regarding dps, it's all warriors and rogues. Mages and hunters basically stink in this fight. The biggest contribution they make is in being chosen for burning adrenaline rather than the priests. Harsh but true. Back when mages could only make four waters at a time, some of our mages would make water during the fight so that they were ready to hand out stacks of water to people before the clear to the Broodlord.

[MongoJerry]

We finally got past him last night. Execute spam was the key. I'm really happy we were able to progress past this annoying bottleneck in just 15 attempts. Getting Razorgore down was much more difficult (we ended up with a pretty unconventional method, but we're able to drop him every time now). Thanks for all the advice. Looking forward to making progress in BWL.
-MB

Grats!

[Bolty]

Back when mages could only make four waters at a time, some of our mages would make water during the fight so that they were ready to hand out stacks of water to people before the clear to the Broodlord.

Hahaha, that's hilarious!

Essence of the Red = the ultimate water-maker!

-Bolty

[Treesh]

O.O

Arcane Explosion? Don't you have to go near him for that? How do you avoid the chain-cleaving? (Same goes for Holy Nova)

Stand where the rogues stand. Or at least by the rogues that aren't notorious for getting cleaved or tail-swiped.;)

[Skandranon]

Regarding dps, it's all warriors and rogues. Mages and hunters basically stink in this fight. The biggest contribution they make is in being chosen for burning adrenaline rather than the priests. Harsh but true. Back when mages could only make four waters at a time, some of our mages would make water during the fight so that they were ready to hand out stacks of water to people before the clear to the Broodlord.

This still happens when you're doing the encounter yet are somewhat overgeared:P I usually have between 60 and 70 seconds left on Essence of the Red when Vael goes down nowadays, and that allows for quite a lot of turbo rebuffing, crystal water and cinnamon rolls.

[NuurAbSaal]

We finally got past him last night.

Gratz:)

We'll get there too, eventually, but summerbreak and burnout has hit our raid alliance hard. We are still gearing new members up for BWL (and Rags again, how embarrasing:o). We had some big problems with Vael, the few times we tried him, after 2 seconds there were 10 poeple dead and nobody quite knew why:P

Thanks to all your input we have a better chance at getting past him now too, I /lub the Lounge:)

take care
Nuurabsaal

[Arnulf]

We'll get there too, eventually, but summerbreak and burnout has hit our raid alliance hard. We are still gearing new members up for BWL (and Rags again, how embarrasing:o). We had some big problems with Vael, the few times we tried him, after 2 seconds there were 10 poeple dead and nobody quite knew why:P

If this is any consolation to you.. you're not alone. People leaving. Compounding the fact is that some 'Elitist Jerks' who we very well equipped left our guild to join a more successful guild. Mentioning in passing that we 'are too slow'. That was quite a serious setback. We're back at square one in AQ40. And Vaelastrasz is still a heavy obstacle. We can be even glad that we still get through Molten Core to see Ragnaros. Last time we downed him with only 36 people.

[NuurAbSaal]

And yesterday we had our first Ragnaros kill again in a few weeks, for the reasons mentioned earlier we never had the force to deal with him UNTIL NOW! Weeeee! It was our usual ridiculous raid-setup again, with 3 priests and 2 druids and about 2 million warriors against 4 mages, but it was one of the smoothest kills we ever had. Warriors and Rogues were really disciplined, we had only one melee death pre-sons and mopped the floor with them, everybody was back in position for Rags about 30 secs before he reemerged, a record for us.

It feels great to get back to a point where we can safely assume we have the whole of MC on farm again (even if we somehow always have to include a wipe at Sulf these days, before killing him with no casualties on second try, pffff:P).

and for the record, I still lub the Lounge:)

take care
Nuurabsaal

[Mirajj]

even if we somehow always have to include a wipe at Sulf these days, before killing him with no casualties on second try, pffff:P).
Nuurabsaal

We call these "Wake up wipes" on SR. We get them every so often. Stuff you know and have on farm...can still wipe you if half the raid is sleepingfighting.;)

[Magicbag]

We have number issues too. We recently broke out of our alliance and started raiding as a solo guild. In that time we had to face tough odds, knowing that it would just hopefully be easier next time when we recruit enough to fill raids. Last week we downed Vael and Broodlord with 37, last night we got Vael to 1% with 33.

It's all possible wtih a little luck on the BA targets and some good execution.
-MB

[LavCat]

We finally got past him last night. Execute spam was the key. I'm really happy we were able to progress past this annoying bottleneck in just 15 attempts. Getting Razorgore down was much more difficult (we ended up with a pretty unconventional method, but we're able to drop him every time now). Thanks for all the advice. Looking forward to making progress in BWL.
-MB

Belated congratulations, my dear, and exactly what *is* that strategy for Razorgore?

[LavCat]

Druids heal the tanks, paladins heal the groups of people that have better FR and don't get priests with them. This is because the paladins give another 60 FR and the damage rates on those people are slow enough (thanks to the higher FR) that they can cycle Holy Light, a 2.5 second cast, through the group. The 1.5 second cast paladin heal is pointless. Most paladins are happy when it crits for over 900 damage on a target that has blessing of light up. It's not a heal, 600 damage healed is just something that might buy you enough time for someone else casting a real heal to get it to land when the next regular hit comes in. So you can heal for ~2400 damage every 2.5 seconds or ~1300 damage every 3 seconds (that is figuring about +300 healing and blessing of light on the target).

A crit for 900 with Flash of Light seems low to me. Tribade who is healing speced but still in some green usually crits closer to 1200. I just tested a few and saw only one crit below 1100 (with Blessing of Light). Flash of Light heals through Scholomance and Stratholme. I would hope that a paladin in MC and BWL equipment could do somewhat better.

For this encounter where mana is not an issue, maybe Holy Light is a better way to go.

[Kevin]

A crit for 900 with Flash of Light seems low to me. Tribade who is healing speced but still in some green usually crits closer to 1200. I just tested a few and saw only one crit below 1100 (with Blessing of Light). Flash of Light heals through Scholomance and Stratholme. I would hope that a paladin in MC and BWL equipment could do somewhat better.

For this encounter where mana is not an issue, maybe Holy Light is a better way to go.

Pallies are wearing like 200-250 FR gear, there isn't much +heal FR gear out there, so the Flash of Light is more or less base with +200 or so healing in MC gear + chants. FoL is 343-383 (or 363 avg), with talent that jumps to 406 average blessing of light adds 115 so you are at 561 average now. You only get I think 42% of your +healing on FoL.

The 115 from blessing of light does seem to get a crit bonus so I'll just consider that part of the "base" FoL. So to get a 1200 FoL crit you need a base FoL of 800, so you need (800 - 561) / .42 = 570 +healing.

Yeah you can have that, but you can't ge that on gear that also gives you 200+ FR, even though you can pretty much give up all your mana and mana regen for the fight. Maybe I'm missing a few enchants. 300 healing I could see on the FR gear, but again that is only gonna give a 'base' FoL of 690 which will be just over a 1K crit.


I still personally find Holy Light a better way to go pretty much all the time. FoL is more mana efficient but the more +healing you get, the less that becomes the case, and the HP/s of Holy Light is about double. So 1 to 2 times the HP/s for only like a .5 to 1 HP/mana reduction (depends on the HL rank)? Yeah FoL is rarely my spell of choice.

[Magicbag]

Belated congratulations, my dear, and exactly what *is* that strategy for Razorgore?

Although it's a little off topic, considering the source, I'm inclined to acquiesce to the request.

I'll assume so I don't cramp my fingers that you have read various strats on RG already. Most guilds use hunters to kite dragonkin, but we found this a huge hassle. We also needed some more redundant DPS on the orc mages. The result was having hunters use a Feign Death/Slow trap rotation while DPSing in assigned corners. Warriors do all the kiting due to better survivability.

Paladins all gather in the middle of the room and heal tanks as needed. We mark tanks with the overhead icons for easy reference. MT on Razor is the first controller, his backup controlls until the next phase after that. Then it's a ping pong battle between the tanks while DPS goes crazy. For some reason the person who has the most agro on RG tends to get conflagged almost constantly, so we make our 2nd tank take all the conflags, while our MT goes toe-to-toe.

Hope that helps.

[Mirajj]

<stratsnip>

Took a page right out of Avarice's playbook.;)That's pretty close to what we do on SR.