01-09-2006, 02:30 PM
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
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
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.
