UBRS - The General

[Kevin]

After taking down the general last night for the first time (it was only the 2nd time I've faced him and the first time with a full raid) I learned a few things that may come in handy.

Several of the people who have run him many times are commenting that something has changed in the fight, that it is harder now than it had been, but no one has been able to put a finger on it. I can't comment on that.

What I did learn though after Darian went down early and I switched to the general was that Greater Fire Protection Potions do help against the conflagerate. I also found that he hates Gnome warriors. :) I was conflaged probably 10 times in the fight. If I went near him he would conflag me. Of course since if he didn't conflag me the taunt and sunder kept him on me I had some hate on him from somewhere. Anyway when I drank the pot (they share a timer with a heal pot) I absorbed 2 out of 3 conflag pulses while the pot lasted. I was able to move somewhat and hold him as a target and keep attacking though I did still have interrupts on it from the conflat pulses that did hit me.

It may not be the biggest thing, but with at least 2 lukers, NSD and Treesh, being able to make those pots they are worth looking into for anyone who will potentially be getting aggro on the general and has a chance to be chain conflagged. :)

Keeping a rezzer (a paladin for us) out of combat was also a huge help in taking him down as people could be brought back up mid fight.

I think with how often the guards have been resisting fears and sleeps that having a hunter pull him one way with a shot so that it doesn't go on the tank on the general from the start would be quite helpful. It can be feared after that shot, but you don't want it's initial hate on him. Darian died because of that (I took my guard and he had the general and one guard because of fear resist) and I died once from it on my first attempt on the general. Those guards can do 2900+ damage without a crit to a warrior in def stance who has over 54% damage reduction. You don't want that on the person on the general, ever.

Anyway, just some thoughts, but I really wanted to mention the pots.

[Hatterson]

After taking down the general last night for the first time (it was only the 2nd time I've faced him and the first time with a full raid) I learned a few things that may come in handy.

Several of the people who have run him many times are commenting that something has changed in the fight, that it is harder now than it had been, but no one has been able to put a finger on it.  I can't comment on that.

What I did learn though after Darian went down early and I switched to the general was that Greater Fire Protection Potions do help against the conflagerate.  I also found that he hates Gnome warriors.  :)  I was conflaged probably 10 times in the fight.  If I went near him he would conflag me.  Of course since if he didn't conflag me the taunt and sunder kept him on me I had some hate on him from somewhere.  Anyway when I drank the pot (they share a timer with a heal pot) I absorbed 2 out of 3 conflag pulses while the pot lasted.  I was able to move somewhat and hold him as a target and keep attacking though I did still have interrupts on it from the conflat pulses that did hit me.

It may not be the biggest thing, but with at least 2 lukers, NSD and Treesh, being able to make those pots they are worth looking into for anyone who will potentially be getting aggro on the general and has a chance to be chain conflagged.  :)

Keeping a rezzer (a paladin for us) out of combat was also a huge help in taking him down as people could be brought back up mid fight.

I think with how often the guards have been resisting fears and sleeps that having a hunter pull him one way with a shot so that it doesn't go on the tank on the general from the start would be quite helpful.  It can be feared after that shot, but you don't want it's initial hate on him.  Darian died because of that (I took my guard and he had the general and one guard because of fear resist) and I died once from it on my first attempt on the general.  Those guards can do 2900+ damage without a crit to a warrior in def stance who has over 54% damage reduction.  You don't want that on the person on the general, ever.

Anyway, just some thoughts, but I really wanted to mention the pots.

Whenever I have killed the general we have used the tried and true method of tank on each guard, kill one guard, kill the other kill drak. The only times I have ever wiped (twice total) were when we deviated from that plan and tried to kill Drak first or kill just one of the guards and then him. I have succesfully completed this encounter with a group of 6 warriors, 1 priest, 1 druid, and 1 shaman and some DPS. You just need to make sure your healers are prepared and are really only healing the MTs. Kill the shamans guard first (or palain if you're alliance side) and you should do fine. Your priest may need to pop a mana pot, but usually we are good without it.

Also, if you have the chance to be conflagged 10 times the fight is taking way way way too long. I have been consta conflagged before and my record is 5 I believe. Basically each guard takes a max of 20-25 seconds to kill and the general is maybe 45 if you are doing it right.

[Zarathustra]

Just adding a bit of advice on top of Hatter's "tried and true" method (same way I've always handled the encounter): pull the guards away.

It can make a world of difference to pull them away from Drakk, so his AoE fire does not affect the tanks on them. Keeping them bunched up is just calling out for your raid to take unnecessary fire damage.

(Edited to correct brain burp)

[Kevin]

Whenever I have killed the general we have used the tried and true method of tank on each guard, kill one guard, kill the other kill drak.  The only times I have ever wiped (twice total) were when we deviated from that plan and tried to kill Drak first or kill just one of the guards and then him.  I have succesfully completed this encounter with a group of 6 warriors, 1 priest, 1 druid, and 1 shaman and some DPS.  You just need to make sure your healers are prepared and are really only healing the MTs.  Kill the shamans guard first (or palain if you're alliance side) and you should do fine.  Your priest may need to pop a mana pot, but usually we are good without it.

Also, if you have the chance to be conflagged 10 times the fight is taking way way way too long.  I have been consta conflagged before and my record is 5 I believe.  Basically each guard takes a max of 20-25 seconds to kill and the general is maybe 45 if you are doing it right.
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You assume a fair number of hardshells. That is often not the case. A paladin will also have trouble locking aggro on a guard against the full out DPS. Shaman can generate a fair bit more aggro than a paladin a can even if they take more damage.

Have you done the encounter since the last patch? Everyone seems to think something was stealth changed in the last patch to make it harder as well.

I may not have been conflagged 10 times but it was more than 5. But with only 3 warriors and 1 paladin in the battle there are aggro problems. When you are conflagged the general will leave you and go attack something else. When your paladin has to help heal you he isn't tanking that much. We don't have optimal groups. If we had had 6 warriors, then yeah, you could have off tanked both guards had two warriors at least on the general to keep him in place when one gets conflagged. We didn't and you generally won't alliance side. With 6 warriors it would be a snap to taunt the bastard off a squishy during a conflag, heck 4 would let you do that easy too, we had 3, one died early. A squishy is very likely to be one hit killed to the general or a guard.

We also had several first time runners there. So bad things happened but we survived it.


Edit: Took out my pointless inflamatory comments. Posting while in a bad mood not good. Sorry if you read them and were offended.

[Kevin]

Just adding a bit of advice on top of Gnollguy's "tried and true" method (same way I've always handled the encounter):  pull the guards away.

It can make a world of difference to pull them away from Drakk, so his AoE fire does not affect the tanks on them.  Keeping them bunched up is just calling out for your raid to take unnecessary fire damage.
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Yeah, we did pull the one away the other was going to be away because of the chain fearing that had a resist on the first go.



General comment. My original post wasn't about comprehensive start for him. It was just some oberservations that could help people. Things went bad last night and we still won the battle. That's pretty much that.

[Tal]

You assume a fair number of hardshells.  That is often not the case.  A paladin will also have trouble locking aggro on a guard against the full out DPS.  Shaman can generate a fair bit more aggro than a paladin a can even if they take more damage.
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Actually given no worries of CC a tank paladin (like Sharanna) can hold single target aggro very well. My first run against general I was in charge of tanking the left guard in a corner while another warrior tanked the right in the other room with the rest of the group. My only problem was taking damage too quickly but I survived. Against the general I got conflagged too much to survive the encounter with my healer healing the MT.

I'm willing to try off tanking the second general on one of these runs. :)



Please drop my Lightforge Mr. General :(

[Zarathustra]

Yep, just adding another snippet of advice for him. The potions can help a lot in just about any battle.

The Princess in Maraudon was a joke when everyone had greater nature resist potions.

[Kevin]

Actually given no worries of CC a tank paladin (like Sharanna) can hold single target aggro very well. My first run against general I was in charge of tanking the left guard in a corner while another warrior tanked the right in the other room with the rest of the group. My only problem was taking damage too quickly but I survived. Against the general I got conflagged too much to survive the encounter with my healer healing the MT.

I'm willing to try off tanking the second general on one of these runs. :)
Please drop my Lightforge Mr. General :(
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Yeah, but you don't seem to be a common pally build from what I've read. :) It's not the way I'm going with my pally either. :) Besides well all know the Tal needs to be nerfed. :P

[KiloVictor]

Just adding a bit of advice on top of Hatter's "tried and true" method (same way I've always handled the encounter):  pull the guards away.

It can make a world of difference to pull them away from Drakk, so his AoE fire does not affect the tanks on them.  Keeping them bunched up is just calling out for your raid to take unnecessary fire damage.
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I think they (the guards) also have multi-target melee attacks: Cleave, Sweeping Strikes, that sort of thing. Offtanking them away from the boss is almost mandatory.

Kv

[Tal]

Yeah, but you don't seem to be a common pally build from what I've read.  :)  It's not the way I'm going with my pally either.  :)  Besides well all know the Tal needs to be nerfed. :P
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[Rainman voice] I'm good at pulling aggro from Darian. M'yeah. Definitely good at that.[/voice] ;)

[Darian]

[Rainman voice] I'm good at pulling aggro from Darian. M'yeah. Definitely good at that.[/voice] ;)
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[mutter]May as well just respec fury and go berserk.[/mutter]

[Tal]

[mutter]May as well just respec fury and go berserk.[/mutter]
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So you want all our groups to be wipes? 'Cause I can't take a beating like you can. I'm just an aggro thief. :) *


*I could always put on Blessing of Salvation but I like tweaking your nose. ;)

[Icebird]

As a warlock I've found 5 points in Suppression works wonders with Fear resists. I've chain-feared one of Drak's guards a couple of times without problems. After the first fear goes off, I usually add Curse of Shadows, which helps with re-fear attempts.

Give me enough time I could probably kill the guard solo. (This is based on my experience chain-fearing a Hederine slayer long enough for 5 or 6 Curse of Dooms to go off - a spell with 1 minute timer. Stupid fricking Doomguard quest).

Chris

[Quark]

Whenever I have killed the general we have used the tried and true method of tank on each guard, kill one guard, kill the other kill drak.

Yes, yes, this was our "tried and true" method ourself. Until last Thursday, when we started having all this random trouble that we never had before. We also pull the guards away, as mentioned elsewhere. None of that has mattered for the difficulties we have faced lately.

Also, if you have the chance to be conflagged 10 times the fight is taking way way way too long.  I have been consta conflagged before and my record is 5 I believe.  Basically each guard takes a max of 20-25 seconds to kill and the general is maybe 45 if you are doing it right.
[right][snapback]81172[/snapback][/right]

Our MT went down in about 10 seconds, and went from full to zero health in about 2. After that, do you really expect the "normal" fight guildlines to apply? One guard was down, and we started working on a second. But our tank had to peel off to the general, so I tanked the guard with Evasion. Well guess what, after evasion expired my life quickly dropped to nil (damn me for not using Prep + Evasion before the first one wore out). Thus I went down quickly, and I was a huge chunk of the DPS, being the only Rogue in the raid. This also caused the guard to take out some other DPS people before he went down, and that makes the general fight that much slower.

[Darian]

Yes, yes, this was our "tried and true" method ourself.  Until last Thursday, when we started having all this random trouble that we never had before.  We also pull the guards away, as mentioned elsewhere.  None of that has mattered for the difficulties we have faced lately.
Our MT went down in about 10 seconds, and went from full to zero health in about 2.  After that, do you really expect the "normal" fight guildlines to apply?  One guard was down, and we started working on a second.  But our tank had to peel off to the general, so I tanked the guard with Evasion.  Well guess what, after evasion expired my life quickly dropped to nil (damn me for not using Prep + Evasion before the first one wore out).  Thus I went down quickly, and I was a huge chunk of the DPS, being the only Rogue in the raid.  This also caused the guard to take out some other DPS people before he went down, and that makes the general fight that much slower.
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To put this in perspective... when I got ressed by our out-of-combat paladin, I would bandage up to full and make sure the priests were up before re-engaging. I had over 6K HP, and over 7K armor.

I still died three times in that fight.

To put this even more in perspective, the first dozen or so times I fought the General -- all of which were before this last patch, all of which relied on the same basic tactics minus keeping a pally out of combat to res in combat, all but one of which were with me as the MT, and most of which were with the same core party members (Quark, Grizelle, Skan, Arethor, Altrius, and Lissa have been with me on most UBRS runs I've done) -- I only died twice. Period. Something changed here, and in light of the fact that LBRS got nerfed in the last patch, it doesn't surprise me.

[KiloVictor]

To put this in perspective... when I got ressed by our out-of-combat paladin, I would bandage up to full and make sure the priests were up before re-engaging.  I had over 6K HP, and over 7K armor.

I still died three times in that fight.

To put this even more in perspective, the first dozen or so times I fought the General -- all of which were before this last patch, all of which relied on the same basic tactics minus keeping a pally out of combat to res in combat, all but one of which were with me as the MT, and most of which were with the same core party members (Quark, Grizelle, Skan, Arethor, Altrius, and Lissa have been with me on most UBRS runs I've done) -- I only died twice.  Period.  Something changed here, and in light of the fact that LBRS got nerfed in the last patch, it doesn't surprise me.
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Were you guys bitten by the DoT damage multiplier bug that snuck into the last patch?

People have reported all sorts of DoT mobs doing full damage per tick with DoT attacks since that patch. Blizzard appears to be fixing it server-side, and it may in fact be resolved by now (I haven't seen an official response, but I know that Illucia Barov's Curse of Agony is much more reasonable now than it was last patch day). But it's possible that the damage from the Conflagrate attack went up enormously due to the bug.

Kv

[Trien]

Has anybody ever tried the Goblin Rocket Helmet method (with the current patch or before)? One guy came up with the idea on some pickup run, and we gave it a shot just for kicks... knocked one of the guards out for 30 seconds, we killed the 2nd guard without having to worry about the first at all, then hit the first, then Drak. Was so funny we had to do it a 2nd time (since a few more people needed the blood).

Wonder if that still works...

[Quark]

Were you guys bitten by the DoT damage multiplier bug that snuck into the last patch?
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Maybe, we'll have to be more careful watching that. In any case, the thing that sucks is that we had a strategy that only ever failed once before the patch (and worked after a SS res to restart even then), and since then it's worked 2 out of 5 times. And everything recommended by those who haven't been there with us are recommending what we're already doing, so it doesn't make any sense :/

[Kjartan]

Were you guys bitten by the DoT damage multiplier bug that snuck into the last patch?
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That would explain the 25k Deep breath from Onyxia my guild got hit with last night. At least it thought people to not cause it in the first place ;-)

[KiloVictor]

That would explain the 25k Deep breath from Onyxia my guild got hit with last night. At least it thought people to not cause it in the first place ;-)
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Heh, it would, except we took one of those before the patch. I think it was only our second run against her actually.

Definitely a wakeup call for the raid. :)

Kv