Nightbane

[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