01-03-2006, 01:43 PM
Update on the Avarice Alliance progress, and thread revival:
After our heady victory over Razorgore around two weeks ago, we have failed to take him down again. Two nights of unending wipes are forcing us to re-examine our strategy.
Here's what we're currently doing, and what we used during our one and only successful attempt:
Two warriors kite the mobs around the room. Generally, a warrior is the orb controller, switching off with another warrior, paladin, what have you. Priests are the sacrificial lambs and play aggro bounce games, fading, psychic screaming, and running for their lives in phase 1. The goal being to keep the druids and paladins alive for phase 2. Druids sleep Dragonkin and help out on DPS.
What goes wrong: it's so random. The margin for error is just nonexistent, which is the problem. Last night we did have one run with a fairly clean move to phase 2, and lost because the healers couldn't keep one of the two Razorgore tanks up (a real shame, we would have won). But still, that was one clean move to phase 2 out of the last 10-15 attempts.
Couple of things I noted:
1) Holy Nova is out. It should not be used - as Treesh noted, it breaks the crowd control we have in place on the Dragonkin. This is a real shame, since it's a no-aggro heal, and the whole problem of this encounter is aggro.
2) A maximum of 12 Dragonkin will be in the room at any one time. We have GOT to find a way to crowd control *all 12* of these. Strategies I read online mention having the druids keeping them hibernated, while warlocks chain fear them throughout all of phase 1. Our problem is: we don't have enough warlocks and druids. We'd need 12 total. We're way short on warlocks! Even still, we need our warlocks to chain fear a dragonkin in phase 1, and make that their sole duty.
Why is it important to keep the Dragonkin controlled? For starters, I noticed they move pretty quick. It was hard for me to get away from them once they came for me. Secondly, our kiting warriors noted that they kept getting dazed by the Dragonkin.
We need to get it so only the Legionnaires are active and moving around the room after our kiters and healers.
3) Randomness. Best quote of the night was from Treesh, who was playing the priest Aleri: "the less I heal, the more aggro I get." Aggro is so WONKY in phase 1. I've had runs where I'm throwing flash heals around like a maniac and I'll still go a full minute before getting aggro and starting my kiting maneuvers. Other times, I'll have a renew up on one player and have two Legionnaires going for me.
It all has to do with the timing of the heals - as mobs run out of the walls, they see a heal going on someone and then take off after you. This randomness makes things so very difficult.
4) Chaining. I see it happening almost every run. CTRA will give me the signal that I have aggro. No problem. I move around, buy a little time, and as the mob comes close to me I fade out. That mob moves to another priest, who does the same, along with another mob they have. Then the next priest. And the next.
What happens is that one mob I had turns into a roaming death squad in short order. Every mob a priest picks up joins this squad as they move from healer to healer. On a run where I'm the "lucky" last priest standing, I see this in full force, as the squad of 6 to 10 members come for me. You can only last so long, especially once the force grows over 5 members, since Psychic Scream only fears a maximum of five targets.
Strategies:
I've been thinking of alternative ways we could run this encounter. Here are some ideas:
A) Four corner modification: we branch out our DPS and tanks to the four corners. Healers stand in a fairly tight group in the middle of the room, in range of these corners. As healing aggro is built up, the Priests protect each other with fear bombs in rotation - a "circle the wagons" approach. Kiters continue to do their thing, and all DPS concentrate on wasting mages the moment they appear. Liberal crowd control whenever possible - lots of sheep, lots of sleep, lots of fear, nonstop.
What's good: this could probably protect the healers better.
What's bad: it doesn't matter how much armor you have; those Legionnaires HURT. Trying to actually tank a few in each corner will only lead to the death of our warriors - I saw this firsthand in our original corner-based attempts. Even if the warrior lives through the tanking, the amount of healing required to keep them alive means our Priests will see a lot of aggro, possibly more than could keep them vertical even with consistent psychic screaming. I wouldn't mind giving this a shot, though. The idea intrigues me. :)
B) No more warriors as kiters: leave the kiting to other classes. Perhaps it's time to see what our mages are made of - take our best, most nible, most fleet-of-keyboarding mages and have them use Arcane Explosion to gain aggro, Ice Armor to slow anyone who hits them, Blizzard to slow others more, blink to dash away, etc, to form the kiting trains. Mages with PvP experience would be best suited for this, since they're used to the quick-action gameplay. Warriors still are the controllers, and can assist with grabbing aggro on the stray mobs that come for our oh-so-squishy priests (since we'll have extras now that they're not kiting).
What's good: it's my favorite new strategy to try, and the one I think gives us the best shot. I'm sure some mage players would be itching to have a go at this challenge. If the Priests are made aware of who our two kiting mages will be, they can focus on them and keep the shields and heals up on them at all times - in fact, we'd have Priests dedicated to doing just that. Since more warriors are freed up, they can help chase down those mobs that are wiping out our priests and fling Intimidating Shouts and aggro gains on them. Survival rate of healers might soar.
What's bad: it would be difficult to keep Dragonkin sleeping if the mages are running around the room blasting with Arcane Explosion/Blizzard. However, since this is the Druid's primary job for phase 1, they'd just have to be ready to re-apply sleep whenever their Dragonkin gets woken up. Margin for error on the mages is just nonexistent; if one of them lags, misses a step, or blinks the wrong way, they're dead in a heartbeat and all the healing in the world won't save them. Of course, the same is usually true for the warriors, too, once those trains grow to 10 or more.
C) Priests stay with warriors: the priests jog around in place with the kiting warriors and only use Renews and Shields for healing other players, since these are the two instant-cast heals all Priests have. As priests get aggro, the kiting warriors wind up picking those mobs up simply because the priest aggro trains join in with the warrior aggro trains.
The good: high protection ratio for priests. Can renews and shields do the job? Mana isn't really a concern in this fight; aggro is, so it's not like the poor-efficiency Shields are a problem. I've never run out of mana in this encounter, except for our one successful try when we lasted the whole time, and even then plenty of other healers had mana to spare. Remember, our Druids and Paladins are generally saving their mana for phase 2.
The bad: priests won't be able to use flash heal, so death rate for DPS will probably rise. Rogues will likely not survive phase 1 - they're the ones who require the flash heals the most, from my experience. Also, it's extremely difficult for the priests to stay with their kiting warriors because it's so hard to predict their exact movements. Lag behind the kiting warrior by even a second and you're likely to get cleaved to smithereens. It may prove just too difficult, even with lots of practice and knowing the exact kiting path each warrior will take. I'd still love to try it, though. Making kiting group 1 a warrior and 3-4 priests, kiting group 2 a warrior and 3-4 priests (so that the priests can easily see on the minimap where their warrior is), and go to town...
I'd love to try all three of these strategies and see how they work out. I figure anything's better than what we've been doing lately, since a success rate of 1 out of 20 obviously isn't going to cut it. Sure, we were close last night, but we have to reduce our margin for error if we ever want to reliably just walk in and farm this prick like we do Molten Core. On paper, our current strategy should work, but we all know how TheoryCraft goes.
Also, if you know of another strategy, do tell. If the strategy involves a Shaman doing something, please keep in mind that we don't have any, and yes, Earthbind totems make a HUGE difference in this encounter. The margin for error is far, far larger when every mob in the room is slowed down to walking speed, allowing all your players (especially healers) to just run away from them with ease. I'm not complaining about "easy mode," I just don't want to hear from Horde players that "this really isn't that hard," etc. :) Try running it without the earthbinds or frostshocks (FROSTSHOCK!!!!!) sometime.
-Bolty
After our heady victory over Razorgore around two weeks ago, we have failed to take him down again. Two nights of unending wipes are forcing us to re-examine our strategy.
Here's what we're currently doing, and what we used during our one and only successful attempt:
Two warriors kite the mobs around the room. Generally, a warrior is the orb controller, switching off with another warrior, paladin, what have you. Priests are the sacrificial lambs and play aggro bounce games, fading, psychic screaming, and running for their lives in phase 1. The goal being to keep the druids and paladins alive for phase 2. Druids sleep Dragonkin and help out on DPS.
What goes wrong: it's so random. The margin for error is just nonexistent, which is the problem. Last night we did have one run with a fairly clean move to phase 2, and lost because the healers couldn't keep one of the two Razorgore tanks up (a real shame, we would have won). But still, that was one clean move to phase 2 out of the last 10-15 attempts.
Couple of things I noted:
1) Holy Nova is out. It should not be used - as Treesh noted, it breaks the crowd control we have in place on the Dragonkin. This is a real shame, since it's a no-aggro heal, and the whole problem of this encounter is aggro.
2) A maximum of 12 Dragonkin will be in the room at any one time. We have GOT to find a way to crowd control *all 12* of these. Strategies I read online mention having the druids keeping them hibernated, while warlocks chain fear them throughout all of phase 1. Our problem is: we don't have enough warlocks and druids. We'd need 12 total. We're way short on warlocks! Even still, we need our warlocks to chain fear a dragonkin in phase 1, and make that their sole duty.
Why is it important to keep the Dragonkin controlled? For starters, I noticed they move pretty quick. It was hard for me to get away from them once they came for me. Secondly, our kiting warriors noted that they kept getting dazed by the Dragonkin.
We need to get it so only the Legionnaires are active and moving around the room after our kiters and healers.
3) Randomness. Best quote of the night was from Treesh, who was playing the priest Aleri: "the less I heal, the more aggro I get." Aggro is so WONKY in phase 1. I've had runs where I'm throwing flash heals around like a maniac and I'll still go a full minute before getting aggro and starting my kiting maneuvers. Other times, I'll have a renew up on one player and have two Legionnaires going for me.
It all has to do with the timing of the heals - as mobs run out of the walls, they see a heal going on someone and then take off after you. This randomness makes things so very difficult.
4) Chaining. I see it happening almost every run. CTRA will give me the signal that I have aggro. No problem. I move around, buy a little time, and as the mob comes close to me I fade out. That mob moves to another priest, who does the same, along with another mob they have. Then the next priest. And the next.
What happens is that one mob I had turns into a roaming death squad in short order. Every mob a priest picks up joins this squad as they move from healer to healer. On a run where I'm the "lucky" last priest standing, I see this in full force, as the squad of 6 to 10 members come for me. You can only last so long, especially once the force grows over 5 members, since Psychic Scream only fears a maximum of five targets.
Strategies:
I've been thinking of alternative ways we could run this encounter. Here are some ideas:
A) Four corner modification: we branch out our DPS and tanks to the four corners. Healers stand in a fairly tight group in the middle of the room, in range of these corners. As healing aggro is built up, the Priests protect each other with fear bombs in rotation - a "circle the wagons" approach. Kiters continue to do their thing, and all DPS concentrate on wasting mages the moment they appear. Liberal crowd control whenever possible - lots of sheep, lots of sleep, lots of fear, nonstop.
What's good: this could probably protect the healers better.
What's bad: it doesn't matter how much armor you have; those Legionnaires HURT. Trying to actually tank a few in each corner will only lead to the death of our warriors - I saw this firsthand in our original corner-based attempts. Even if the warrior lives through the tanking, the amount of healing required to keep them alive means our Priests will see a lot of aggro, possibly more than could keep them vertical even with consistent psychic screaming. I wouldn't mind giving this a shot, though. The idea intrigues me. :)
B) No more warriors as kiters: leave the kiting to other classes. Perhaps it's time to see what our mages are made of - take our best, most nible, most fleet-of-keyboarding mages and have them use Arcane Explosion to gain aggro, Ice Armor to slow anyone who hits them, Blizzard to slow others more, blink to dash away, etc, to form the kiting trains. Mages with PvP experience would be best suited for this, since they're used to the quick-action gameplay. Warriors still are the controllers, and can assist with grabbing aggro on the stray mobs that come for our oh-so-squishy priests (since we'll have extras now that they're not kiting).
What's good: it's my favorite new strategy to try, and the one I think gives us the best shot. I'm sure some mage players would be itching to have a go at this challenge. If the Priests are made aware of who our two kiting mages will be, they can focus on them and keep the shields and heals up on them at all times - in fact, we'd have Priests dedicated to doing just that. Since more warriors are freed up, they can help chase down those mobs that are wiping out our priests and fling Intimidating Shouts and aggro gains on them. Survival rate of healers might soar.
What's bad: it would be difficult to keep Dragonkin sleeping if the mages are running around the room blasting with Arcane Explosion/Blizzard. However, since this is the Druid's primary job for phase 1, they'd just have to be ready to re-apply sleep whenever their Dragonkin gets woken up. Margin for error on the mages is just nonexistent; if one of them lags, misses a step, or blinks the wrong way, they're dead in a heartbeat and all the healing in the world won't save them. Of course, the same is usually true for the warriors, too, once those trains grow to 10 or more.
C) Priests stay with warriors: the priests jog around in place with the kiting warriors and only use Renews and Shields for healing other players, since these are the two instant-cast heals all Priests have. As priests get aggro, the kiting warriors wind up picking those mobs up simply because the priest aggro trains join in with the warrior aggro trains.
The good: high protection ratio for priests. Can renews and shields do the job? Mana isn't really a concern in this fight; aggro is, so it's not like the poor-efficiency Shields are a problem. I've never run out of mana in this encounter, except for our one successful try when we lasted the whole time, and even then plenty of other healers had mana to spare. Remember, our Druids and Paladins are generally saving their mana for phase 2.
The bad: priests won't be able to use flash heal, so death rate for DPS will probably rise. Rogues will likely not survive phase 1 - they're the ones who require the flash heals the most, from my experience. Also, it's extremely difficult for the priests to stay with their kiting warriors because it's so hard to predict their exact movements. Lag behind the kiting warrior by even a second and you're likely to get cleaved to smithereens. It may prove just too difficult, even with lots of practice and knowing the exact kiting path each warrior will take. I'd still love to try it, though. Making kiting group 1 a warrior and 3-4 priests, kiting group 2 a warrior and 3-4 priests (so that the priests can easily see on the minimap where their warrior is), and go to town...
I'd love to try all three of these strategies and see how they work out. I figure anything's better than what we've been doing lately, since a success rate of 1 out of 20 obviously isn't going to cut it. Sure, we were close last night, but we have to reduce our margin for error if we ever want to reliably just walk in and farm this prick like we do Molten Core. On paper, our current strategy should work, but we all know how TheoryCraft goes.
Also, if you know of another strategy, do tell. If the strategy involves a Shaman doing something, please keep in mind that we don't have any, and yes, Earthbind totems make a HUGE difference in this encounter. The margin for error is far, far larger when every mob in the room is slowed down to walking speed, allowing all your players (especially healers) to just run away from them with ease. I'm not complaining about "easy mode," I just don't want to hear from Horde players that "this really isn't that hard," etc. :) Try running it without the earthbinds or frostshocks (FROSTSHOCK!!!!!) sometime.
-Bolty
Quote:Considering the mods here are generally liberals who seem to have a soft spot for fascism and white supremacy (despite them saying otherwise), me being perma-banned at some point is probably not out of the question.