Nightbane

[Skandranon]

A number of comments:

Firstly, the quotes from Gurgthock are referencing the old, un-nerfed Nightbane, where Smoking Blast hit for 4000 physical damage every second and Nightbane landed crushings on the tank for between 11,000 and 13,000 points of damage. If you didn't get Smoking Blast on to a paladin, you died, and Nightbane's hits were so massive you basically had to chain max-rank heals on the tank to keep him up. In that context, 23% overhealing is fantastic.

The current Nightbane is another thing entirely. But taking the subject back to the old one for just a second: healing was different. Damage incoming is part of it, but I see the difference as being also partly in the way tank hit points have scaled up dramatically, as well as there just being fewer healers all around.

In the AQ40 and Naxx cancel-heal days, on emps and Patchwerk, yeah, bosses could two-shot tanks. In the AQ40 days, 7.5k HP on a tank was great, and if you got Unbalancing Strike for 4k followed up by a 4k crit, yeah, your tank was toast. You still cancel-healed to save mana, though, because there were four more healers lined up behind you that would land heals fractions of a second after you cancelled your heal, any two of which were sufficient to max out the tank's hit points and allow him to take another huge hit. The boss simply wasn't going to hit your tank again before at least two heals landed and pushed the tank to 100%. So long as your tank didn't get one-shot from 100%, you were good to go. For a lot of situations, especially in BC 25-man content, this method of healing still applies. For that matter, it's still valid in a lot of Karazhan, because most bosses just don't spike tanks that heavily (although you have fewer healers).

The old Nightbane, however, was a nightmare scenario for cancel-healing. He hit so hard, and you needed so much healing to top the tank off again, that cancelling could mean death.

On Emps, for example, let's say you cancel your heal 0.5s from the end, and 0.2s after that he Unbalances the tank for 4k damage. Your heal could have been useful - but it's OK, because a fraction of a second after your heal would have hit, the tank takes 8k healing and is back to max to take the incoming crushing. That you cancelled your heal was less than optimal, but far from a disaster.

Now let's take the old Nightbane. Your tank has 15,000 HP, and you're cancel-healing. At 0.5s from the end of the spell, the tank is at 100%, and you cancel. 0.2s after you cancel, Nightbane crushes the tank for 13,000 points of damage. In the referenced Gurgthock post, he has only three healers in the raid, so assuming that, only two healers are in the queue after you. Let's say their timing is impeccable, so they both land 4,000 point heals immediately after the crushing blow, bringing your tank up to 10,000 HP. Nightbane then crushes the tank for 11,000 points, your tank dies, you wipe.

The point of the numbers and examples is this: in two situations where, functionally, the exact same things happened, in one of them, the tank lives, and in the other, the tank dies. With up to 13k on a crushing, you chain max ranks on the tank and you let them go off, you don't cancel, because if you do cancel, the other two healers may not be enough to get the tank's HP up high enough before your next heal can land. As I said, however, Nightbane has been nerfed since.

That said, the basic design of the fight is relatively unchanged, and Bolty's right - it's basically a huge mana drain from start to finish, and having efficient healers helps a lot. This group composition is definitely trying to do it the hard way.

I actually just got my first experience healing on Nightbane tonight, on my questionably geared alt paladin (the raid was nine alts and one main). We lost our rogue on the first flight and our shadow priest at 68%, but wound up with a kill anyway. We had only three players healing; two holy paladins and a resto shaman, and the resto shaman wasn't even in the same group as the other healers because we needed alternating tremor totems to compensate for lack of Fear Ward. By the time he touched down for the third time, our mage and warlock had joined the other two players in death, but we were able to hang on for the last 25%.

There's something to trying to reduce overheal on the current incarnation of this fight. Nightbane doesn't hit extraordinarily hard, nothing that will require heavy spam-healing, and Titans + Ironshields should reduce that even more. Light consumable use (Fel Mana Potions) might be something to look into as well (flasking Mighty Resto is an option but a distasteful one). Also, your comment about any of the three healers taking a break to regen or all getting feared resulting in tank death doesn't fit with my experience at all; frequently, all of our healers would wind up feared and we'd just throw big heals on the tank the moment fear broke. Nature's Swiftness helped us on a couple of them, but it wasn't up for all of them. During the last 25%, I had to stop and regen for about 15 seconds to let my potion cooldown come back up, and the tank wasn't in danger of dying.

Grouping up during the Rain of Bones also sounds strange to me. It does light physical AE damage, so grouping is just making sure you all get hit. Fireball Volley requires you to be absurdly distant; it's not something you should be worrying too much about. Basically, if you're in range of Nightbane or in range to heal his tank during the ground phase, you won't be hit by Fireball Volley during the flight phase.

Ultimately the solution may be finding a paladin or getting a druid to respec. Group composition truly plays a bigger role in TBC raid content than in anything that was in 1.0, mostly because raid sizes are smaller. I think it's doable, though difficult, with the current composition, but from here on out it really does start to get significantly more difficult without a well-composed raid.

[Skandranon]

What's the difference between saying "we need x ability for this fight" or "we need x class (who is the only class who can perform that ability) for this fight"?

I'd agree with Frag in that I do not think that there is any case where there is an ability exclusive to one class. For example, Moroes is completely doable with zero priests: just bring skilled Paladins who know how to properly employ Turn Undead. For that matter, Moroes is tricky but even doable without any Priests or Paladins at all (but then he is difficult). It's easy to underestimate the range of capabilities available to a raid group.

For Aran, specifically, lacking a warlock is a significant loss but not immediately fatal. I don't know much about your group's composition, but it obviously has a hunter since you're in it. Scour the AH for some mail greens "of Frost Protection", then at ~42%, feign and macro-equip the entire set. Once the elementals pop, immediately shift focus to firing on the elementals and drawing their aggro towards you (click off Salv if you have it). Especially with a control strategy, there won't be any pressing need to have DPS on Aran while the elementals are out because you've presumably forced the poly earlier. With ~250 or greater frost resist (a paladin or shaman in your group can raise your resists easily, and a Magic Resistance potion works well if you don't have either of those), the elementals will all fire waterbolts at you and inflict very minimal damage. With all the stamina on the "Frost Protection" gear, you'll be very easily healable, and all you need to do is outaggro healing threat split five ways.

For groups lacking a hunter, a rogue can do the same trick with vanish, but being melee they're obviously disadvantaged. A paladin healing with Righteous Fury and employing Righteous Defense in moderate frost resist gear can also reliably draw aggro on all four elementals if no one else is touching them. For groups lacking hunters, rogues, and paladins, get a warrior or bear druid to gear up in frost resist from the start of the fight and have him run around sundering/clawing elementals once they spawn. If your warrior has trouble with it, get another one to do it too. You'd be employing a control strat again, which isn't DPS reliant, and you can interrupt in frost gear as well as you can in normal gear.

Now, having two warlocks makes it cake, and one warlock still helps a lot. Other solutions are obviously inferior, and I don't deny that. However, though other solutions are more difficult, that doesn't mean that they're impossible. It's not possible for Blizzard to tune an encounter to be equivalent difficult for all reasonable permutations for a 10 man raid group, but it is possible for there to be enough ways out of a jam that no raid group is completely screwed. One of those ways out is consumables, and on Nightbane it may be the only way out, which is distasteful in a number of ways. But every other fight has options.

[Bolty]

Firstly, the quotes from Gurgthock are referencing the old, un-nerfed Nightbane, where Smoking Blast hit for 4000 physical damage every second and Nightbane landed crushings on the tank for between 11,000 and 13,000 points of damage. If you didn't get Smoking Blast on to a paladin, you died, and Nightbane's hits were so massive you basically had to chain max-rank heals on the tank to keep him up. In that context, 23% overhealing is fantastic.

Skan, just a nit: Gurgthock is indeed referencing the new, easier Nightbane. Check the link again.

Thanks for the comments, though; we'll try not grouping up for the start of flight phases and we'll *have* to find at least one more dedicated healer.

-Bolty

[Mirajj]

For Aran, specifically, lacking a warlock is a significant loss but not immediately fatal. I don't know much about your group's composition, but it obviously has a hunter since you're in it. Scour the AH for some mail greens "of Frost Protection", then at ~42%, feign and macro-equip the entire set. Once the elementals pop, immediately shift focus to firing on the elementals and drawing their aggro towards you (click off Salv if you have it). Especially with a control strategy, there won't be any pressing need to have DPS on Aran while the elementals are out because you've presumably forced the poly earlier. With ~250 or greater frost resist (a paladin or shaman in your group can raise your resists easily, and a Magic Resistance potion works well if you don't have either of those), the elementals will all fire waterbolts at you and inflict very minimal damage. With all the stamina on the "Frost Protection" gear, you'll be very easily healable, and all you need to do is outaggro healing threat split five ways.

Yeah, this is what we'll be looking at this week for Aran. I've been saving any resist gear I've found as I've tooled around the Outlands, and have a decent (but not great) set so far. Should be interesting.

[Skandranon]

Skan, just a nit: Gurgthock is indeed referencing the new, easier Nightbane. Check the link again.

Oops. You're partially right, he's not talking about the old Nightbane which I was talking about. I'm partially right, too: he's not talking about the current Nightbane, either.

Nightbane actually underwent a series of hotfixes all relatively close together, so there were actually four versions:

Nightbane 1.0: Skeletons have a 900 point immolation aura. Nightbane crushes for 11000-13000 damage. Smoking Blast inflicts 4000 damage per second.

Nightbane 2.0: Skeletons no longer have immolation and are immune to non-holy magic damage. Nightbane crushes for 11000-13000 damage (unchanged). Smoking Blast inflicts 1400-1600 damage per second. Nightbane fears during the flight phase (bug).

Nightbane 2.1: Skeletons are no longer immune to non-holy magic damage. Crushings and Smoking Blast unchanged. Nightbane no longer fears during the flight phase, but instead does "fake" fears where he begins to cast and interrupts himself at the end.

Nightbane 2.2: Crushings reduced to 7000-9000 damage. "Fake" fear issue mostly fixed.

2.0 came with patch 2.0.10, 2.1 was hotfixed in on the next Tuesday, and 2.2 was hotfixed in the week after. Gurgthock's comments aren't, as I erroneously said, talking about 1.0, but he is talking about 2.1, which is not the current version of the fight. He's still talking in the context of bigger hits on the tank than you're experiencing, but he is talking about the nerfed Smoking Blast and easy skeletons.

[Lissa]

Like GG, I probably shouldn't be responding to this thread, but I feel I needed to point something out:

Please don't spread misinformation. Those fights are designed to have certain abilities available.

The fact that Shackle is simply the most direct ability of CC on Moroes adds' does not mean it was built assuming one would be along. I'm mildly suprised to hear you feel you need to have three specific classes on Netherspite when, with mediorce raid composition, no voice communication, and people that didn't know each other all that well, we've defeated him during a beta semi-pickup run. He's an execution fight, I don't feel that saying it's built to have *those classes* along is wise as it's likely to close peoples' minds to variance in [e.g. what class eats what beam]. From what I observed Blizzard has not been designing TBC fights with specific specs/classes along. It sure as hell IS easier to drop Netherspite with a warlock along, but that doesn't mean it's "required" in any sense of the definition.

Cheers,
~Frag B)

Actually, I would disagree with the bolded. Blizzard is designing these fights based on having one of each class making up your raid with a filler of some kind. Blizzard did not leave much leeway in a number of fights if you don't have a certain class along for the ablities that class presents. Try Netherspite without atleast one Warlock in the blue beam and then with a Warlock in the blue beam. The healers do have to pay attention to the person in the blue beam, but if it's a Warlock they don't have to worry as much because the Warlock will be self healing through use of Drain Life where other classes will require a lot of attention. That are several fights in Karazhan that if you don't have that class ability you're in for a world of hurt. (The only fights I can definitely say for sure that what classes you bring makes little difference in difficulty would be Attumen, Maiden, Curator, Illhoof, and Prince, the other fights become significantly easier if you have the right class there or mixed your group with one of everything with a filler.)

[Lissa]

I'd agree with Frag in that I do not think that there is any case where there is an ability exclusive to one class. For example, Moroes is completely doable with zero priests: just bring skilled Paladins who know how to properly employ Turn Undead. For that matter, Moroes is tricky but even doable without any Priests or Paladins at all (but then he is difficult). It's easy to underestimate the range of capabilities available to a raid group.

For Aran, specifically, lacking a warlock is a significant loss but not immediately fatal. I don't know much about your group's composition, but it obviously has a hunter since you're in it. Scour the AH for some mail greens "of Frost Protection", then at ~42%, feign and macro-equip the entire set. Once the elementals pop, immediately shift focus to firing on the elementals and drawing their aggro towards you (click off Salv if you have it). Especially with a control strategy, there won't be any pressing need to have DPS on Aran while the elementals are out because you've presumably forced the poly earlier. With ~250 or greater frost resist (a paladin or shaman in your group can raise your resists easily, and a Magic Resistance potion works well if you don't have either of those), the elementals will all fire waterbolts at you and inflict very minimal damage. With all the stamina on the "Frost Protection" gear, you'll be very easily healable, and all you need to do is outaggro healing threat split five ways.

For groups lacking a hunter, a rogue can do the same trick with vanish, but being melee they're obviously disadvantaged. A paladin healing with Righteous Fury and employing Righteous Defense in moderate frost resist gear can also reliably draw aggro on all four elementals if no one else is touching them. For groups lacking hunters, rogues, and paladins, get a warrior or bear druid to gear up in frost resist from the start of the fight and have him run around sundering/clawing elementals once they spawn. If your warrior has trouble with it, get another one to do it too. You'd be employing a control strat again, which isn't DPS reliant, and you can interrupt in frost gear as well as you can in normal gear.

Now, having two warlocks makes it cake, and one warlock still helps a lot. Other solutions are obviously inferior, and I don't deny that. However, though other solutions are more difficult, that doesn't mean that they're impossible. It's not possible for Blizzard to tune an encounter to be equivalent difficult for all reasonable permutations for a 10 man raid group, but it is possible for there to be enough ways out of a jam that no raid group is completely screwed. One of those ways out is consumables, and on Nightbane it may be the only way out, which is distasteful in a number of ways. But every other fight has options.

I wouldn't say the issue is whether the fight is possible or not, but whether the difficulty is reduced. As has been noted, two warlocks on Aran makes it easy, three it's a joke. Two warlocks on Netherspite makes dealing with the blue beam easy, one makes it a little bit problematic when you have a non-warlock taking the beam, but not too bad, no warlocks means the healers have to be paying attention to who's in the blue beam. Nightbane is extremely difficult if you do not have a Paladin or Shaman along (easier for the Paladin because of more armor for damage reduction than the Shaman, but the Shaman can still get close to 50% damage reduction). Blizzard definitely designed Karazhan around having one of every class.

Ideally, I see the optimal Karazhan group as:

Warrior that has atleast 15 to 20 points in protection
Druid with a lot of feral talents and a good number of resto talents
Warlock any flavor
Mage any flavor
Priest that is either Holy/Discipline or Displine/Holy
Paladin that has a mix of Prot and Holy talents
Shaman that has a mix of Enchanement and Resto talents
Rogue any flavor
Hunter any flavor
and the filler being a Priest that is Shadow/Discipline.

edit: changed second Netherspite to Nightbane.

[NuurAbSaal]

I would agree with Lissa that Karazhan fights are designed around a raid group with certain classes in it. Our first tries on Aran were without a warlock, and it was quite painful, we didn't get him down. We managed Wizard of Oz without Warlock with a fear rotation from the priests, that wasn't too much of a problem, Aran is definately a lot harder.

What bugs me most about Karazhan, class issues aside, is the randomness of some fights. You can have nigh perfect execution at Aran and then he decides to camp his Blizzard. Bummer, either melee takes the considerable damage and continues to interrupt, draining healer mana rapidly, or you let him stand there and shoot people, using up his mana and the mana of your healers and approaching the poly/pyro annoyance.

Illhoof. Now I might be a nub, but I haven't found a pattern to his sacrifices, they seem random (haven't read everything about him, it kind of spoils the fun of the first try, which was great). Today I (main tank) got chosen for first and second sacrifice on two consecutive attempts, both times causing an eventual wipe. The offtank simply hadn't had enough time to get past the healer aggro on Illhoof. Apart from overall suboptimal performance from our side, the randomness of the sacrifice, while making the fight interesting, can wipe you without much you can do about it. Or so I think.

Prince Malchezaar. I watched a video where almost the entire raid stood totally still for the entire duration of the fight, just once the maintank had to move about ten yards sideways to avoid an infernal. All other infernals happily piled onto the right side of the platform, almost on top of each other. Obviously the fight is a hell of a lot easier if you don't have to juggle your raid around the hellfires. Too bad if the opposite happens and the infernals space themselves out nicely and set you up for a burn or shieldwall escape with option to wipe. Grrr.

While not as nasty as Aran, getting the first three garrotes from Moroes on your healers makes the fight quite a bit harder too, in my opinon.

Now, I totally understand that there needs to be some random element to keep the fights interesting. Nothing wrong with that, but to have situations where your raid can barely, if at all, react to a change of the rules has been the reason of much frustration among our raiders, especially while learning new encounters.

On one hand you have pushovers like the Maiden, on the other hand you get wiped by some random fight mechanic. Evil. I suppose this will become less of a problem as we get to know the encounters better, get better gear and also improve our playing, but it is very annoying if something seemingly unavoidable ends the encounter in desaster for you. The whole trashmob madness adds to that.



Offtopic ftw:o
Sorry, had to vent a bit. I have not seen Nightbane yet and can't contribute:(

take care
Tarabulus

[Gort]

Funny how Lissa perfectly describes our Karazhan group, yet last night was our 4th solid night of wipewipewipewipewipe on Aran.

*cry*

[Artega]

How many mobs have you had hitting you and how much CC did you have on those runs? Try some of the other mobs in other instances like the Bog Giants in Heroic SMV, 3 mobs hitting you at once (like Heroic SH, the guantlet at Murmur, areas in Botanica, and Sethekk Hall guards) and see how much damage you take then. Your basis here is pretty limited as Mechanar and Slave Pens are considered the joke heroics compared to others (I've heard Heroic Mechanar referred to as Tokenar).

I've done Mechanar without warlocks or mages and had no wipes:)

[Bolty]

Funny how Lissa perfectly describes our Karazhan group, yet last night was our 4th solid night of wipewipewipewipewipe on Aran.

Gort,

I'd recommend some thorough encounter analysis. Was anyone capturing the combat log? You can analyze things such as:

1) How many fireballs and frostbolts did Aran get off? 100% interrupts is impossible, but you want it to be as high as possible. Fireballs and frostbolts are much harder to heal through than Arcane Missiles (which is very easy to heal through if you're watching who Aran is targetting).

2) How much Blizzard damage is the raid taking? Getting caught by Blizzard due to a Flame Wreath is no excuse; ranged players should be chasing the "back" end of a Blizzard to ensure that doesn't happen.

3) Are people setting off Flame Wreaths? Ultimately if someone is setting them off over and over, they may just need to sit out. It's harsh, but there's not much else you can do, really. If it's a different person setting them off each time, some kind of system to help stop that from happening is necessary. Again, to get our first kill, I had to shout "STOP MOVING" over Teamspeak each time a Flame Wreath was coming. We didn't have the chant back then. :)

4) Anyone dying to the Arcane Explosion? Unless they were conflagged or "ice shackled" and not dispelled, see #3.

5) While some swear by the "control" strategy, allowing Aran to polymorph the raid before 40% so that he can't do it while the elementals are out, I despise it. The longer the fight runs, the greater the chance that Something Goes Wrong™ and someone screws up. (We saw this in full force last night during Prince attempts - with low DPS, phase 2 lasts longer and longer, and eventually the MT's going to get creamed by something.) If he's polymorphing the raid while elementals are out, either there's not enough dps, the interrupting is poor (remember, if fireballs and frostbolts are interrupted, he's not burning his mana on them), or people were dying earlier. We go for the "burn the bastard" strategy, trying to kill him before the polymorph. Only actually been successful at that once; even when we're not, by the time he polymorphs, the elementals are long gone and he's near death.

6) You said you have a hunter - is he using snake traps? These confuse the heck out of Aran and he'll waste shots on the snakes. Okay, apparently you can't use these now after the patch, since they'll set off flame wreaths, but just checking if it is/was part of the strategy.

7) How long do your interruptors let him cast a fireball or frostbolt before interrupting it? The longer, the better, accounting for latency and such.

8) When elementals are out, who are they going after? Typically it's your healers who will get reamed at this point, dooming you. If 3 or more elementals decide to hit one healer, they can self-heal all they like but it won't save them; the damage is too high. You have one warlock, so we can assume that 2 elementals are being taken care of. What do you do about the other 2? Does the warlock raid-mark his 2 elementals so he can track the feared one easily?

9) How many healers are you using? If you're going for letting him polymorph before 40%, try 4 healers. If you want to burn him down, there should be no more than 3 or you won't have enough DPS.

10) Is Aran ever moving? Aran moving from his central spot and going to the outside of the ring will often wipe you, since he loves to run over into one of his blizzards where the melee can't follow. If Aran is moving, he's getting interrupted too much and someone in ranged has aggro. This is, of course, a problem. Let him use Arcane Missiles, it's a cinch to heal through.

11) Healers should go ZOMG spam-heal-happy when elementals are out. Too many people tend to be taking too much damage in too many different ways to use long-cast heals like you can when the elementals aren't around. Mana be damned; if you come out of the elementals with 10 people alive, you're going to win, period.

Ultimately: who's dying first? If it's healers - likely during the elementals stage; need to find a better way to handle elementals to protect the healers. I know early on I'd get killed sometimes trying to save others caught in Blizzards, leading to me getting caught in Blizzards myself because I can't move while I'm healing. Sometimes you have to let go; it's not your fault they die. If it's non-healers dying first, either the raid needs to interrupt more, the healers need to be more predictive of incoming damage, or people aren't watching blizzards/flame wreaths/arcane explosions and need to pay better attention.

For future wipes, I'd suggest not attempting Aran again until it's determined why the last attempt failed. Else, you're just throwing yourselves at him over and over and over, hoping you'll get lucky one time and he dies. As long as people have cool heads and don't take things personally, identifying what the problem was and who is causing it so that they are less likely to do it again should pay off. Else, you get nowhere because nobody learns anything. This is tricky because people rarely want to admit they may have made a mistake or that their character isn't geared enough.

Speaking of gear, how many hit points do people have? You really want to get everyone over at least 8,000 hit points, using whatever consumables can make it happen. On our early attempts, that meant Elixir of Mastery, Rumsey Rum, and food buffs for me, along with plenty of gear enchants. This allows a character to have a decent chance of surviving 2 direct blasts from Aran in a row, not to mention absorbing a post-polymorph pyroblast better.

-Bolty

[Delc]

For future wipes, I'd suggest not attempting <strike>Aran</strike> any boss again until it's determined why the last attempt failed. Else, you're just throwing yourselves at him over and over and over, hoping you'll get lucky one time and he dies.

/agree

5 minutes spent discussing improvements to make is a better use of your time than an extra wipe usually. Just don't let it devolve into the blame game.

[Legedi]

Gort,

I'd recommend some thorough encounter analysis. Was anyone capturing the combat log? You can analyze things such as:

1) How many fireballs and frostbolts did Aran get off? 100% interrupts is impossible, but you want it to be as high as possible. Fireballs and frostbolts are much harder to heal through than Arcane Missiles (which is very easy to heal through if you're watching who Aran is targetting).

I used to think we were doing good enough on interupts until I learned two things last night. First, we had one attempt that seemed like our interupts where really on, Aran was at 45% HP and 75% mana. This is much better than usual for us. So if we can do it one time we should do it every time. Second, our healers are burning through mana a lot faster than I've heard they should, and people are still dieing. So that just mean the raid is taking too much damage. Some from fireballs/frostbolts, some from blizzards.

2) How much Blizzard damage is the raid taking? Getting caught by Blizzard due to a Flame Wreath is no excuse; ranged players should be chasing the "back" end of a Blizzard to ensure that doesn't happen.

That is what is really getting us at times. If we just have a blizzard we seem to be doing good. But when half way through the blizzard we get a Flame Wreath I'll see 2-3 people have to stop and get hit by the blizzard.

3) Are people setting off Flame Wreaths? Ultimately if someone is setting them off over and over, they may just need to sit out. It's harsh, but there's not much else you can do, really. If it's a different person setting them off each time, some kind of system to help stop that from happening is necessary. Again, to get our first kill, I had to shout "STOP MOVING" over Teamspeak each time a Flame Wreath was coming. We didn't have the chant back then. :)

While we have had a lot of wipes from someone setting of Flame Wreaths our last 4-5 attempts last night not a single one went off, so I think everyone is getting this down better.

4) Anyone dying to the Arcane Explosion? Unless they were conflagged or "ice shackled" and not dispelled, see #3.

The only time I've seen people die from this is usually during the elemental part. The elemental phase is hard because not only do people have to react to them, they still really have to focus on Aran still.

5) While some swear by the "control" strategy, allowing Aran to polymorph the raid before 40% so that he can't do it while the elementals are out, I despise it. The longer the fight runs, the greater the chance that Something Goes Wrong™ and someone screws up. (We saw this in full force last night during Prince attempts - with low DPS, phase 2 lasts longer and longer, and eventually the MT's going to get creamed by something.) If he's polymorphing the raid while elementals are out, either there's not enough dps, the interrupting is poor (remember, if fireballs and frostbolts are interrupted, he's not burning his mana on them), or people were dying earlier. We go for the "burn the bastard" strategy, trying to kill him before the polymorph. Only actually been successful at that once; even when we're not, by the time he polymorphs, the elementals are long gone and he's near death.

On our "good" attempts we are on pace to get through the elementals before the poly/pyro happens. On our "non good" attempts... well we've got other things we need to do better.

6) You said you have a hunter - is he using snake traps? These confuse the heck out of Aran and he'll waste shots on the snakes. Okay, apparently you can't use these now after the patch, since they'll set off flame wreaths, but just checking if it is/was part of the strategy.

We really only thought about the snake traps this week, now that we can't use them.

7) How long do your interruptors let him cast a fireball or frostbolt before interrupting it? The longer, the better, accounting for latency and such.

I really just try to interupt when I can, with lag and reaction time it's usually in the last half of the cast.

8) When elementals are out, who are they going after? Typically it's your healers who will get reamed at this point, dooming you. If 3 or more elementals decide to hit one healer, they can self-heal all they like but it won't save them; the damage is too high. You have one warlock, so we can assume that 2 elementals are being taken care of. What do you do about the other 2? Does the warlock raid-mark his 2 elementals so he can track the feared one easily?

We rarely get to the elementals with everyone up. If we do have everyone up we seems to be doing ok on them. I can't really say any better than if we have less than 10 people when we get to the elementals we are toast.

9) How many healers are you using? If you're going for letting him polymorph before 40%, try 4 healers. If you want to burn him down, there should be no more than 3 or you won't have enough DPS.

We've been going the last few times with 3 holy spec healers, and gort in his DPS gear with with a 2H and earth shocking.

10) Is Aran ever moving? Aran moving from his central spot and going to the outside of the ring will often wipe you, since he loves to run over into one of his blizzards where the melee can't follow. If Aran is moving, he's getting interrupted too much and someone in ranged has aggro. This is, of course, a problem. Let him use Arcane Missiles, it's a cinch to heal through.

We have had a few times where he runs around, but that has only happened on 2-3 attempts.

11) Healers should go ZOMG spam-heal-happy when elementals are out. Too many people tend to be taking too much damage in too many different ways to use long-cast heals like you can when the elementals aren't around. Mana be damned; if you come out of the elementals with 10 people alive, you're going to win, period.

We just need to get with the elementals with 10 people alive.

Ultimately: who's dying first? If it's healers - likely during the elementals stage; need to find a better way to handle elementals to protect the healers. I know early on I'd get killed sometimes trying to save others caught in Blizzards, leading to me getting caught in Blizzards myself because I can't move while I'm healing. Sometimes you have to let go; it's not your fault they die. If it's non-healers dying first, either the raid needs to interrupt more, the healers need to be more predictive of incoming damage, or people aren't watching blizzards/flame wreaths/arcane explosions and need to pay better attention.

For future wipes, I'd suggest not attempting Aran again until it's determined why the last attempt failed. Else, you're just throwing yourselves at him over and over and over, hoping you'll get lucky one time and he dies. As long as people have cool heads and don't take things personally, identifying what the problem was and who is causing it so that they are less likely to do it again should pay off. Else, you get nowhere because nobody learns anything. This is tricky because people rarely want to admit they may have made a mistake or that their character isn't geared enough.

Speaking of gear, how many hit points do people have? You really want to get everyone over at least 8,000 hit points, using whatever consumables can make it happen. On our early attempts, that meant Elixir of Mastery, Rumsey Rum, and food buffs for me, along with plenty of gear enchants. This allows a character to have a decent chance of surviving 2 direct blasts from Aran in a row, not to mention absorbing a post-polymorph pyroblast better.

-Bolty

[Mirajj]

Let him use Arcane Missiles, it's a cinch to heal through.

In addition to that, all the mana cost on Missles is frontloaded. If he casts even one Arcane missle, he's already spent all the mana he will on it and the only point to interrupting it is if he's beating on someone who can't take the pounding. Focus your interrupts on Fireball/Frostbolt, as the mana is taken from him just before the spell completes. That way he wastes the cast time and doesn't get the spell/mana loss.

[Bolty]

Thought of some other things that may help.

1) Where are the ranged standing? Standing at max range from Aran is a mistake; ideally, you want to be standing only 10-15 yards away from Aran to stay just outside his counterspell range. Why? Mobility. Geometry shows that you can circle around the room much faster to avoid Blizzards if your distance from Aran is smaller. If you're against a wall and a Blizzard is forming right over your head, you're boned, since the distance you have to run to get out of it is much longer than if you were a mere 15 yards away from Aran. Hunters should stand at minimum range to shoot and no further.

2) Ranged should bunch up. Move around as a unit, and it's easier for people to figure out when and where they're going to move. Marking someone in the raid with high awareness of Blizzards is helpful, but there's also just that natural human reaction thing where if you're standing in a crowd and 2-3 people start running away, you'll notice it a lot better than if you're standing out by yourself somewhere and Blizzard's forming over your head. Those ranged players with slower reaction times/lag in your raid will benefit from being in a crowd, together. This of course doesn't apply to the elementals phase, since you'll need to split up some to handle them.

3) Curse of Tongues works on the elementals to slow their fire.

4) How are you handling interrupt rotations? There's two main ways: pick a school for a player to interrupt ("you got fire, I got frost"), or else take turns ("got him, you're next!"). Different ways will work better for different people; I could understand that it would be a little more difficult to see *which* spell he's casting before going to interrupt it, but with the other method, you'd need to know at all times if it's your "turn" to interrupt or not. Figure out which system works best with your group.

5) Druids should cast Tranquility immediately after a Polymorph.

6) Interruptors should do their thing as fast as possible after a Polymorph, or the first person targetted will die. Best role for this? Someone who can interrupt at range (Shaman, Mage), letting a melee interruptor take the second interrupt. By then, healers should have built enough of a buffer to survive damage output. If you are polymorphed while elementals are out, you've lost anyway.

7) One healer should immediately target whomever Aran targets coming out of a pyroblast and slam-heal them.

8) Having a unitframes mod that allows you to quickly and easily see who Aran is targetting and what Aran is casting at any moment really helps in the healing department. You want those heals landing as the spell is landing, not 3-4 seconds afterward, else you get behind in the healing and it's hard to catch up.

9) Priests can help with elementals via Psychic Scream. Consider them a target of opportunity; if you're near one, go for it. Theoretically you're healing people just by preventing some damage. Often I've gotten weird happenstances like Aran going for his Arcane Explosion, and as I'm running to the edge of the room I wind up near an elemental; I send it running to its momma for 8 seconds. I won't go out of my way to fear one, though, since people tend to ZOMGNEEDHEALINGNOW while elementals are out.

10) Hunters can help with elementals with Scatter Shot.

11) Mages can help with elementals with Counterspell.

12) You still want someone in melee with highest aggro to make sure Aran doesn't run to the sides of the room.

13) If ranged gets aggro, take him back to the center of the room. All other ranged obviously needs to get away to get out of counterspell range, especially healers.

14) If hit by Blizzard, u r nub. No, just kidding - try your damnedest to NOT get hit by Blizzard, because it's a lot worse than people realize. You take damage bigtime, and you occupy the healers who are busy trying to keep Aran's targets alive. Not good. But if you *are* hit by Blizzard, run to the center of the room. Don't try to run counterclockwise to "go through" the Blizzard, and God forbid you run clockwise, then you're just asking for death. Running to the center of the room gets you out of the Blizzard the fastest way possible, getting you to the opposite side of the room from where Blizzard is. This is somewhat counter to the ranged-player mentality, having to run right to the big bad boss.

Ok, out of thoughts for now, hopefully there's something in here that'll help.

-Bolty

[Garek]

This is somewhat counter to the ranged-player mentality, having to run right to the big bad boss.

As a general rule, if you're ranged and you get aggro, your mentality should be to run right to the big bad boss - typically, charging him increases the chance a tank can pull it off you, and if you're going to die, at least you won't take others with you by dragging the boss to them. The instinct is to run away, but for this and most other raid fights, you charge. Warlocks and mages should especially know this, since we usually leave our sense of self-preservation at the door. :D

[Lissa]

As a general rule, if you're ranged and you get aggro, your mentality should be to run right to the big bad boss - typically, charging him increases the chance a tank can pull it off you, and if you're going to die, at least you won't take others with you by dragging the boss to them. The instinct is to run away, but for this and most other raid fights, you charge. Warlocks and mages should especially know this, since we usually leave our sense of self-preservation at the door. :D

Thing with Aran, you don't tank him as he normally doesn't move unless all his regular spells are interrupted. It's more for movement purposes to be close.

[Lissa]

Thought of some other things that may help.

1) Where are the ranged standing? Standing at max range from Aran is a mistake; ideally, you want to be standing only 10-15 yards away from Aran to stay just outside his counterspell range. Why? Mobility. Geometry shows that you can circle around the room much faster to avoid Blizzards if your distance from Aran is smaller. If you're against a wall and a Blizzard is forming right over your head, you're boned, since the distance you have to run to get out of it is much longer than if you were a mere 15 yards away from Aran. Hunters should stand at minimum range to shoot and no further.

2) Ranged should bunch up. Move around as a unit, and it's easier for people to figure out when and where they're going to move. Marking someone in the raid with high awareness of Blizzards is helpful, but there's also just that natural human reaction thing where if you're standing in a crowd and 2-3 people start running away, you'll notice it a lot better than if you're standing out by yourself somewhere and Blizzard's forming over your head. Those ranged players with slower reaction times/lag in your raid will benefit from being in a crowd, together. This of course doesn't apply to the elementals phase, since you'll need to split up some to handle them.

3) Curse of Tongues works on the elementals to slow their fire.

4) How are you handling interrupt rotations? There's two main ways: pick a school for a player to interrupt ("you got fire, I got frost"), or else take turns ("got him, you're next!"). Different ways will work better for different people; I could understand that it would be a little more difficult to see *which* spell he's casting before going to interrupt it, but with the other method, you'd need to know at all times if it's your "turn" to interrupt or not. Figure out which system works best with your group.

5) Druids should cast Tranquility immediately after a Polymorph.

6) Interruptors should do their thing as fast as possible after a Polymorph, or the first person targetted will die. Best role for this? Someone who can interrupt at range (Shaman, Mage), letting a melee interruptor take the second interrupt. By then, healers should have built enough of a buffer to survive damage output. If you are polymorphed while elementals are out, you've lost anyway.

7) One healer should immediately target whomever Aran targets coming out of a pyroblast and slam-heal them.

8) Having a unitframes mod that allows you to quickly and easily see who Aran is targetting and what Aran is casting at any moment really helps in the healing department. You want those heals landing as the spell is landing, not 3-4 seconds afterward, else you get behind in the healing and it's hard to catch up.

9) Priests can help with elementals via Psychic Scream. Consider them a target of opportunity; if you're near one, go for it. Theoretically you're healing people just by preventing some damage. Often I've gotten weird happenstances like Aran going for his Arcane Explosion, and as I'm running to the edge of the room I wind up near an elemental; I send it running to its momma for 8 seconds. I won't go out of my way to fear one, though, since people tend to ZOMGNEEDHEALINGNOW while elementals are out.

10) Hunters can help with elementals with Scatter Shot.

11) Mages can help with elementals with Counterspell.

12) You still want someone in melee with highest aggro to make sure Aran doesn't run to the sides of the room.

13) If ranged gets aggro, take him back to the center of the room. All other ranged obviously needs to get away to get out of counterspell range, especially healers.

14) If hit by Blizzard, u r nub. No, just kidding - try your damnedest to NOT get hit by Blizzard, because it's a lot worse than people realize. You take damage bigtime, and you occupy the healers who are busy trying to keep Aran's targets alive. Not good. But if you *are* hit by Blizzard, run to the center of the room. Don't try to run counterclockwise to "go through" the Blizzard, and God forbid you run clockwise, then you're just asking for death. Running to the center of the room gets you out of the Blizzard the fastest way possible, getting you to the opposite side of the room from where Blizzard is. This is somewhat counter to the ranged-player mentality, having to run right to the big bad boss.

Ok, out of thoughts for now, hopefully there's something in here that'll help.

-Bolty

Something that Bolty may have left out, but I didn't see it mentioned. During the Elemental phase, if you just have one warlock, have everyone, but the Warlock and interruptors break off and kill the extra two elementals. The elementals have around 30k life so the remaining portion of the raid should be able to down one in about 10 to 15 seconds. This will help out immensly if you are down to dealing with three or even two elementals (and the Warlock should be able to handle the two elementals).

Also, for you warlock, they could use the following macro:

/clearfocus [target=focus,dead]
/stopmacro [noharm]
/focus [target=focus,noexists]
/cast [target=focus] Banish

This will allow the warlock to banish their choosen elemental while keeping their fear target constantly targetted, all they have to do is be within range. Before the Aran fight occurs, just have the Warlock click on this macro several times to make sure the focus has been completely cleared as you do not want something being a focus during this fight. This macro makes the Warlock's life easier in this fight.

[Cybit]

Yeah, I need to do a better job of interrupting while keeping full bore DPS on him. As long as he doesn't run away, we can usually shut him down pretty hard, but once he starts running off, either Seiki or I gets rooted, and can't interrupt. Latency was a bitch last night though. I'd have to start interrupting as soon as he casted, otherwise it'd be too late (there were several spells he casted even though the game said I interrupted them, grrr.) I'm thinking an order of interruption rather then schools of interruption. Tufty's interrupt mod would work wonders with an order. (I can just set it to watch for whoever is in front of me's interrupt, and know I'm next)

He's been running around even though we didn't interrupt *anything*. I know on one attempt last night, we didn't interrupt a single spell (deliberately), and he still started chasing Arathandir and Alamanda around the room. I'm wondering whether it is worth giving those two salvation (no paladin last night) and tranquil air totem to give seiki or me a chance at holding aggro.

If we could ever get to the elementals with all ten people up and no SS/battle rezzes used, I think we'd have him. I think Monday we should go for just burning him down, with Seiki devastate spamming while dual wielding. With enough aggro reduction on our lovable aggro whores, he should be able to hold aggro. <3 to our aggro whores though. Question though: what if he insists on using AM repeatedly? I want to say it was the last attempt last night (or one of the last), where he used about 7-8 AM in a row, burning through his mana like it was nobody's business. We still go for the burn or do we turn it into control at that point? I think he usually goes through 15% mana or so in the elementals phase, so we need to keep his life below his mana for the burn option. The other suggestion I heard was having our paladin heal with righteous fury up during the elemental phase, and getting all the aggro from the elementals.

[Zarathustra]

Something that Bolty may have left out, but I didn't see it mentioned. During the Elemental phase, if you just have one warlock, have everyone, but the Warlock and interruptors break off and kill the extra two elementals. The elementals have around 30k life so the remaining portion of the raid should be able to down one in about 10 to 15 seconds. This will help out immensly if you are down to dealing with three or even two elementals (and the Warlock should be able to handle the two elementals).

Interesting, as we always keep damage on Aran rather than the Elementals. We'll have one or two warriors in the raid who can pick up the free elementals, while a warlock banishes one and fears another. The strat has always been just to deal with the elementals and burn Aran to the ground.