11-22-2005, 08:15 PM
Bolty,Nov 22 2005, 06:23 AM Wrote:Issue 1) Ragnaros' AE knockback doesn't just knock you back. Sometimes it knocks you sideways. The mages in my group didn't have the advantage I had - I planted myself against the back wall of the ranged DPS group area. They had to move up some to get in range of Ragnaros, and that made them vulnerable. So just about every AE knockback, one of them would get flung sideways across the room - I could not abandon my post and had to leave them for dead. There's only two solutions I can think of:
A) Will better fire resist actually help against this knockback?
B) All ranged DPS'ers need to be VERY aware of the AE knockbacks and move back against the wall when the CTRA warning goes out. This means probably interrupting whatever attack you're doing and haul butt.
As explained by others, there are two knockback attacks. The one CTRA warns about is one that knocks back the main tank and any other melee within a cone in the direction of the main tank. You want to make sure to have the secondary tank either 90 degrees away from the main tank (and ready to run over to the MT spot if the MT gets punted) or well back away from Ragnaros and ready to charge in if the MT gets punted. The MT and ST should have over 315 fire resistance, because yes those knockback attacks can be resisted and it's much easier on your raid if the MT resists the knockback attack often.
What's important is that aggro is wiped for everyone when the main tank is punted. So, when the CTRA warning comes up, you want all melee to back away and stop attacking. When the attack happens, the MT should announce either "punted," in which case all melee should pause a few seconds to let the secondary tank go in and get a hit on Rag, or "resisted" which means that all melee can go in immediately and pound away.
The other knockback attack is what we call the "grenades" that he throws at ranged attackers. The person targeted just takes damage but does not get thrown. However, the people around that person can get both damaged and thrown. You can resist these attacks with fire resistance, so yes, we try to get as many people as possible to wear 151+ fire resistance. The range on the grenade explosions is about 10 yards, so you have to spread out quite a bit. By the way, the grenades are strictly targeted at mana users, so shamans and paladins should not hang out with the melee. They should heal and provide their auras from across the lava.
Quote:With my rear firmly planted against the ranged DPS wall, any knockbacks that flung me sideways would bump me up against a crop of the wall and put me back down safely (sans the huge fire damage, of course).
Yes, there are different styles for fighting Ragnaros, but this is the way that The Core has found to work well for us: We tank Ragnaros on the southeast side of where Ragnaros emerges. On that side, the majority of main tank healers can have their backs against the wall and still be in healing range of the main tank. We typically have around five people against that wall and then two others to the right where you can place them so that they're far enough away from everybody so that they won't get grenaded. Seven healers is more than enough to keep the main tank up and there's no need for a healer rotation.
The ranged dps and healers for the melee classes spread out along the outside ring. There's plenty of room to spread out, so nobody should be getting launched. If they are, then it's their fault, and that person needs to learn.
Quote:Issue 2) We need to get more DPS on Ragnaros, and I have no idea how. I hear of experienced guilds getting Ragnaros down to 40% health before the first Sons of the Flame spawn, and notice that we're only getting Rag down to 70-75%. It can't solely be gear, there's something we're not doing "right" and I can't figure out what it is. Perhaps too many of us are dying too soon. More fire resistance on DPS'ers will help with that, of course.
Last night, TC didn't have its best group and we got him down to 34% before the first spawn. Of course, we have very good gear (although we had a lot of our "B-team" people who aren't as well geared). You're likely right that it has to do with people dying or getting grenaded and launched. No one should be dying from Ragnaros at all. No melee dps should ever be launched, and no one should ever pull aggro off the main tank. It took us a lot of attempts to get it through our melee dps's brains that they absolutely must back out when the CTRA warning comes up -- to the point of having people turn around just to make sure they don't hit Rag after the knockback attack on the main tank happens.
Quote:Issue 4) Sons of Flame. Ergh. Even with the collapse, the fact that these buggers spawn all over the place wreaks havoc. Ones that spawn near the main tank/main tank healer groups can be picked up pretty easily, and Gnollguy did that extremely well on the 2nd attempt last night (I know this because I was healing him until I ran out of mana - could we get some Priest drops to help with that, Blizzard?). But there are "straggler" ones that spawn way out on the west side rim, between where we had the melee DPS and ranged DPS groups. Those are going to head straight for the healers and there's no tank around to pick them up, so what happened both times was Priests/Mages/Warlocks trying to keep them rooted, banished, or feared. No caster would survive long enough to drag one of them to the tank, and the healers are very busy just trying to keep people vertical and get those Sons off of them. Maybe we can designate someone in the melee DPS group who has very high fire resistance (Quark?) as the temp tank to drag one of those to the real tank - or else arrange to have those straggler Sons banished the moment they appear.
The Sons are the real part of the fight. What we do is set up two sets of main assists. Odd numbered groups assist one person (or his designated backup if that person is dead), Even numbered groups assist the other person (or designated backup) and single target dps them down. Warlocks each banish a son for 40 seconds exactly once. After the collapse, we have tanks on either side of the group with the mana using caster squishies in the middle. (Sometimes if a son gets through the tanks, I'll run to the outside where I won't get mana burned). After a perhaps initial panic, things quickly get under control. The Sons don't have much health, so they die quickly. We then banish the last son when it's at 20% so that we have some time to regnerate mana and bandage up. (If you kill the last son, Ragnaros reappears immediately). We usually have 30 seconds or so to rest before Ragnaros comes up. The raid gets back in their positions. When Ragnaros comes up again, the ranged dps finishes off the last Son and then we finish off Ragnaros.