Nefarian Down!

[JustAGuy]

Well, the title says it all.

This weekend, my guild, "Teh Slax" on Ursin, downed Nefarian.

Sure, you might be saying, this is no rare feat these days. There are lots of guilds out there that can clear Blackwing Lair in 1 day, under 5 hours even. Sure, but that's not us, not yet anyway. We had blue and green drakes, and employed a new strategy for us of grouping all of them together before wiping the floor with them (as opposed to tackling them as they spawn at their gates).

There is one notable thing about us that I thought interesting enough to share with you; we use no form of voice communication what so ever. That means, no ventrillo, no team speak, no nuttin'. We do it old skool!

We're the fourth guild to down Nef on the Horde side on our server, Ursin. The first guild had downed him about two months ago (they're pretty insane, those guys), the second about a month after them. Then, last night, our guild, and another named Insomnia, downed him, within a couple of hours of each other. We're not competing with other guilds, though, it's us vs. Nef, after all.

In true "Slax" fashion, we had been Slaxin' (Slacking off) for a good three weeks on Nef. Some people were scared, some people were slacking, and raid attendence was a bit poor. Last week, we had red and blue drakes, and considering that we weren't ready, we just wrote that week off. It all came down to this week, where we got a good combination of drakes, and a new strategy. Our first attempt with the new strategy, we got Nefarian to 10%. Second attempt was only 18%, because the mages were all dead when the respawns came. The following day, we got him to 20% (again, mages were rocked), and then 0%. There were a smattering of false-starts, and tank-MCs (wherein the tank is MCd and the attempt is wiped), and one wipe in particular that I enjoyed, where one of our mages was MC'd and crit-flamestriked the entire raid, wiping most of us in 1 shot.

I wonder, though, if maybe we could have downed him sooner if we had this new strategy earlier. Splitting the raid in 2 and tackling the drakanoids as they spawn was not working for us. Our first real attempts never got past phase 1 with this strategy. When we changed to the new one, Nefarian landed, and subsequently raped the raid because no one knew what to do after that point! I felt quite satisfied just getting to phase 2, though.

Our raid was lacking in shamans (only 4 of us), but we all did our part. Three of us were in group 1 with the MT and a Warlock. We gave the MT triple tremor totems, grace of air, Windfury, and the three of us alternated Mana tides and Enamored Water Spring Trinkets (also known as Ghetto Tide). The only time our mana went low was during the shaman class call -- as a shaman, that burns all your mana, and time, as you have to kill all the damn totems that spawn.

Now, I can finally say, I have beaten BWL, and it sure feels good!

[Treesh]

Congrats to you and your guild.

[Hedon]

Grats :)

Now hurry, farming Nature Resist gear for Princess Huhu in AQ40 :P

[MongoJerry]

Congratulations! It's such a good feeling, isn't it?

Our guild uses the "stuffing them at the doorway" technique, so I'd be interested to hear how well the aoe technique works against blues and reds, but some guilds use that technique all the time, so if it works for you, then great!

[Quark]

Congratulations!  It's such a good feeling, isn't it?

Our guild uses the "stuffing them at the doorway" technique, so I'd be interested to hear how well the aoe technique works against blues and reds, but some guilds use that technique all the time, so if it works for you, then great!
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We just dealt with our first Red/Blue combo on our third kill -> all three kills using the "Throne" strategy, as we call it.

It was definately tougher. It took a good few attempts to get right, and even then we lost 3 or 4 in the first phase. Damage input is much higher and healer aggro is much higher, both bad parts of the formula. But it's doable. Thus, Throne is doable under all combos.

[Arnath]

Grats JustAGuy! We (The Basin on Tich) just downed Nef this week, so I sorta know the feeling :D

Congratulations!  It's such a good feeling, isn't it?

Our guild uses the "stuffing them at the doorway" technique, so I'd be interested to hear how well the aoe technique works against blues and reds, but some guilds use that technique all the time, so if it works for you, then great!
[right][snapback]108636[/snapback][/right]

We tried "The Throne" method 2 weeks ago on our Nef attempts and it didn't seem to click for us. We had a red/blue combo and just had a lot of problems with healer aggro/containment and healers running out of mana at 20 kills or so. In particular, some of the warriors were saying that the healers had enough aggro around 20 kills that a single Mortal Strike/Bloodthirst wasn't enough to get aggro onto the warrior, which is usually the case in the split method we use.

[Tal]

Congrats!

[Mavfin]

Congratulations!  It's such a good feeling, isn't it?

Our guild uses the "stuffing them at the doorway" technique, so I'd be interested to hear how well the aoe technique works against blues and reds, but some guilds use that technique all the time, so if it works for you, then great!
[right][snapback]108636[/snapback][/right]

Yeah, took us 4 attempts on red/blue, but down he went anyway, throne strat.

I think our favorite part of 'throne strat' is that Phase 3 (the undead drak spawns) takes all of about 10 seconds, and it's back to killing Nef. We even had mage call at 21% last time, and it didn't bother us.

[JustAGuy]

My thanks to all.

It was immensely satisfying to down him after having put so much time and effort into just getting there.

Mongo,

As far as positioning goes, we didn't use the throne on our killl -- we stood inbetween the pillars, facing the spawn points. The warriors were first to pick up aggro, strictly by line-of-sight, and it took less time for the mobs to build up (they had equal distance to run, as opposed to the right side spawn point having to go slightly further). AoEing commenced fairly quickly, but with this strat, there's a lot of room for error. Our wipes were caused by inopportune MCs (tanks that can't be polied because of the AoEing) or healer aggro.

One of our veterans plays as the MT of an alliance guild on Llane, and he was the one that introduced us to this strategy (although, we executed it without him). He was saying that they had gotten red/blue draks that week and it was pretty much a snooze fest to kill Nef. The "throne" strat worked so well that they had very little problems. He was saying that it was easier with Paladins and their blessing of salvation, as opposed to Shamans with their Tranquil Air, though. We got creative with the group formations, so it all worked out in the end anyway.

Funny thing about our guild -- we commenced clearing BWL tonight, and wouldn't you know it, we wiped on Razorgore AND Vael. Typical "Teh Slax" fashion; down the hardest boss, then wipe on the easiest. :)

[lfd]

Funny thing about our guild -- we commenced clearing BWL tonight, and wouldn't you know it, we wiped on Razorgore AND Vael. Typical "Teh Slax" fashion; down the hardest boss, then wipe on the easiest. :)
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That is precisely why Nefarian is rarely considered the hardest boss in BWL, and Razorgore/Vaelastrasz are often thought of as more difficult :)

It's not a "hardness" per se, but those fights are certainly the most intolerant of lag and single player deaths.

[JustAGuy]

That is precisely why Nefarian is rarely considered the hardest boss in BWL, and Razorgore/Vaelastrasz are often thought of as more difficult :)

It's not a "hardness" per se, but those fights are certainly the most intolerant of lag and single player deaths.
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Our problem was mostly that we were "resting on our laurels." We had 1-shotted razor each week since the patch (we ran into some difficulty after the patch because of the totem nerf, but once we adjusted, it was smooth sailing). Probably because of overconfidence, we just didn't concentrate on the two of them. Broodlord, Firemaw, Ebonroc, and Flamegor were all 1-shotted afterward though. Chromaggus on the other hand... We got timelapse, and people just lost their minds. :( It's really not a hard concept... Hide from non-timelapse, be visible for timelapse. Sucks when you resist it 8 of 9 times though.

You're definitely right though about lag and death intolerance. Our wipes this week were basically from a warlock or hunter getting killed somehow (maybe he was asleep at the keyboard) and that loose dragon ripping the shaman kiters up. What happened to me, each time, was that I'd be kiting 10 or 12 legionnaires, and I'll get hit by a dragon. If I wasn't dazed, I'd just dance a bit around the ledges of the stairs to lose him, toss myself a heal, and then pick up mage aggro. The dragon + mage = dead shammy. If I was dazed on the inital dragon hit, the legos all catch up, and set up a shaman buffet table, wherein everyone gets their fill.

I love how BWL starts off with the Razorgore and Vael encounters. After having done MC and ZG, those two encounters are so unique and refreshing. The Razor encounter itself is a guild breaker, then once you get past it, you get Vael, another guild breaker. We've picked up a few choice players from the other guilds that couldn't get past those two encounters.

[Tuftears]

Congratulations! I still haven't seen Nef die, myself, but one of these days a Nef-killing raid will fall on a day I can make. :)

[Arnulf]

This weekend, my guild, "Teh Slax" on Ursin, downed Nefarian.
[...]
There is one notable thing about us that I thought interesting enough to share with you; we use no form of voice communication what so ever. That means, no ventrillo, no team speak, no nuttin'. We do it old skool!
[...]
Now, I can finally say, I have beaten BWL, and it sure feels good!
[right][snapback]108631[/snapback][/right]

Congratulations!

I'm really impressed, though, about the fact that you don't use a voice-com tool. Without teamspeak I would be lost. I wish Blizzard would be incorporate something akin into the game. Like how Microsoft puts voice communication into their Xbox Live network.

The moment when Nefarian lands on the balcony is really something to behold. Personally Blackwing Lair is my favourite raid dungeon. I love the whole dragon theme.

[lfd]

Personally Blackwing Lair is my favourite raid dungeon. I love the whole dragon theme.
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Yep. It actually feels like it's been well-designed. The boss encounters are (mostly!) fun, there are no significant respawns, and there is very little trash. And what trash there is has an element of randomness to it, so it's never quite the same. And who doesn't love sitting there waiting to find out what breathes chromaggus has, or whether you'll be able to quickly rearrange your raid positioning for particular drakonid colours?

It's just fun. I hope Naxx is more like BWL in design philosophy than AQ.

Anybody else's guild have people that like to jinx Chromaggus by saying "TL/IF inc" when he's pulled? :)

[Mirajj]

I'm really impressed, though, about the fact that you don't use a voice-com tool. Without teamspeak I would be lost. I wish Blizzard would be incorporate something akin into the game. Like how Microsoft puts voice communication into their Xbox Live network.[right][snapback]109121[/snapback][/right]

I dunno about this, really. I've been finding more and more that it's "quiet" on TS, unless the discussion doesn't relate to the raid. It'd have been trickier setting up stuff without it, but now that we 'know' what's going down, I find it's use is dropping off quite a bit.

[JustAGuy]

Congratulations!

I'm really impressed, though, about the fact that you don't use a voice-com tool. Without teamspeak I would be lost.
[right][snapback]109121[/snapback][/right]

Doing it without voice communication comes down to judicious use of macros and players knowing their roles. We had many a long typed discussion about boss strategies; the bonus with this also, is that you can scroll up. If someone doesn't get it, or missed it, just scroll up.

A good example of how we coordinate can be found in group 1; the main tank gets 3 tremor totems and us shamans heal his pants off. We all have mana tide and a trinket that is a "ghetto" version of mana tide, so we synchronize dropping them with quick typing countdowns and macro presses. After a shaman call, our mana pools are decimated, so it's quite useful for us to save one or even two tides for after the call.

It would be easier for us to communicate what to drop and whats left on the cooldowns if we had voice chat, but it's not necessary. Personally, I like the quiet. We've only had a few people burn out or turn away from the guild due to failure, and I like to think that it's because there's no one literally yelling at them for mistakes. :)

MANY WHELPS! LEFT SIDE! EVEN SIDE!

Without voice chat, there appears to be less drama. Less public drama anyway. There's always going to be controversy, but without a facility to actually discuss it, it ends up going to whispers or officer chat, and it's handled without much public interest. This tends to keep us a fairly tight group, in my opinion. Part of what makes us uniquely us is the fact that we play without voice chat. It's one of our selling points. Some people flock to us for that reason (success without chatting), and some leave because of it (some players can't play without talking to other players).

I do enjoy a good voice chat now and again, but for the most part, I'd rather not wear a headset.