Nightbane

[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.