Terenas Friday 4/14

[Mavfin]

[snip]

[*]2 shamans a group does not make. To me it felt like too much of one thing for the group to really progress efficently. WTB a rogue or warlock.  :D

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[st]
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I'll agree. However, we ended up that way because we were the 'leftovers' after everyone else had their groups made. When you make your real attempts, go for optimal group that doesn't put your elemental DPS shaman in healing gear, i.e. bring a priest for flash heal.

[vor_lord]

khgerg asked me a question I can't answer:

Is it possible to skip the 4-5 elites (can't remember) which come out of the Baron's building after the death of Ramstein and the skellie spawns?

Could you hide somewhere, sneak by them into the Baron's room and save yourself some time?

Heck, could you frost nova them, run in and aggro the Baron and have the doors keep them out?

Necrali purchased Prayer of Shadow Protection this weekend. She also had Mogo enchant her staff with +20 spirit. So a couple more things to give a bit more help to squeeze time out of the run.

[Concillian]

khgerg asked me a question I can't answer:

Is it possible to skip the 4-5 elites (can't remember) which come out of the Baron's building after the death of Ramstein and the skellie spawns?

Could you hide somewhere, sneak by them into the Baron's room and save yourself some time?

Heck, could you frost nova them, run in and aggro the Baron and have the doors keep them out?
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That's a very interesting question. Also, I have enough ghost mushrooms for several invis pots, hard time thinking where they'd really be useful though, maybe between maleki and aboms?

Other consumables we weren't using are wizard/mana oil

[VoiceMan]

That's a very interesting question.  Also, I have enough ghost mushrooms for several invis pots, hard time thinking where they'd really be useful though, maybe between maleki and aboms?

Other consumables we weren't using are wizard/mana oil
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I don't think we (in our group Friday anyway) had healer mana issues, so I'm not certain wizard's oil is needed. It might help, but I was keeping my innervate for the priest, and I think I only used it three times. With a 6 minute cooldown, and a 45 minute run tells me I can use innervate 7.5 times (if my math is correct, which is seldom is). However, I think I only used it 3 times total on our last attempt. What I think I will do is go in with all my DPS gear on. Friday I was wearing a mix of DPS and Int gear, in an effort to keep my mana pool high enough to help heal if need be, but I really didn't do much backup healing, and we didn't do much rotation of healers due to mana running out, so I will try and up my DPS. I think Necrali can do more DPS as well, and I'll use my innervate on him more regularly to help compensate for the extra mana usage for DPS.

As for skipping the group of guards who come out right after Ramstein...that's an interesting question. I suggest if we get to that point, and we've already missed the time cut-off, then let's see if we can bypass them and get inside without killing them. I'd hate to get to the guards with 4 minutes left on the timer, skip them, only to find out that they follow us in the room and we end up with them, the baron, and the skellies. :P But it seems they roam around the room if they don't aggro on anyone immediately. So if we're out of time, I say we test it. Now, if we get through Ramstein, and we still have 5 minutes or so on the timer, I say we kill them and go. :D

[vor_lord]

That's a very interesting question.  Also, I have enough ghost mushrooms for several invis pots, hard time thinking where they'd really be useful though, maybe between maleki and aboms?

Other consumables we weren't using are wizard/mana oil
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Octord was juiced up on wizard oil. I did use mana oil myself as well, but not the top rank. I think Octord purchased the shadow elixir recipe this weekend and will be using that (also takes ghost mushrooms).

I will definitely do more damage -- innervates went unused.

One of the biggest areas I'd like to speed up is the Baroness, if we can only figure out how. Thought about a naked/nearly naked warrior... it sure takes a long time to burn down all that stamina.

One problem we've had with the Baroness is that we've been trying to entice her to MC the mage. This works great if she does it, but she hammers him. Xarhud and I had the same problem -- she really hates the healer after that. What I'm wondering is that if the mage uses mana shield. I believe when she releases mind control that mana will be completely restored (not sure, I know health is) so that won't be a loss.

Does she heal and/or mana up when she starts the mind control as well?

[Concillian]

The other way I've thought to do the baroness is to have someone pull her, and use the warrior in DPS gear.

If the initial charge is done with intercept, then he burns the cooldowns, there is little he can do to get into range. As long as fazuul stays out of my range, you guys could pelt me down nicely.

And by using intercept + recklessness with a big 2H, warrior should have a good amount of hate built up too. Now that I have cape of the black baron, I should be able to put together a relatively low stamina DPS gear setup to use for the first part, then switch out to tanking gear after baroness.

It's risky because a mind controlled DPS warrior is a terrible thing, but if you can keep me out of range with frost nova and frostbolt, the danger is reduced.

The other thing that does is unlock some DPS for her, which should lead to more consistently getting her with only 2 MCs. We pretty much need to find a way to consistently have only 2 mind controls. A 3rd is just too long.

I put together 2 more profiles specifically focused on 45 minute run, a tanking set that offers a bit more DPS, sacrifices some +def, but almost completely makes up avoidance in dodge with agility, sacrifices some stam, but I don't think that's a large concern on these runs. Also a DPS set looking at virtually minimizing DPS. click the link on my sig and you can see the 45 minute profiles.

Actually looking at the tanking stuff again, it looks like I can add about 2.5% crit, 0.75% dodge and 30 armor by sacrificing only stamina (~300 life) compared to what I was wearing on the friday runs. I think this would be a decent trade-off for the 45 minute runs, increasing DPS, reducing damage taken at a little expense of how big my life bar is, but I don't think that was really an issue at all for the run except maybe for the baron, and I have a tanking / shadow resist set for that specific encounter.

[Kevin]

Octord was juiced up on wizard oil.  I did use mana oil myself as well, but not the top rank.  I think Octord purchased the shadow elixir recipe this weekend and will be using that (also takes ghost mushrooms).

I will definitely do more damage -- innervates went unused.

One of the biggest areas I'd like to speed up is the Baroness, if we can only figure out how.  Thought about a naked/nearly naked warrior... it sure takes a long time to burn down all that stamina.

One problem we've had with the Baroness is that we've been trying to entice her to MC the mage.  This works great if she does it, but she hammers him.  Xarhud and I had the same problem -- she really hates the healer after that.  What I'm wondering is that if the mage uses mana shield.  I believe when she releases mind control that mana will be completely restored (not sure, I know health is) so that won't be a loss. 

Does she heal and/or mana up when she starts the mind control as well?
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I've wondered about a hunter pet pull (a pet with dash) like is done in Molten Core for a few of the bosses. The pet has a smaller aggro radius by far than the hunter themselves you could potentially pull her while leaving even more mobs unkilled (if she doesn't leash I wonder about taking her back into the gate even). Not sure whoat that would do for the MC, maybe put it on the hunter. I know you guys didn't have a hunter and you want strats that don't require one as well, but it's something I've been thinking about.

[khgerg]

Other consumables we weren't using are wizard/mana oil
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I was using both Arcane Elixir and Lesser Wizard Oil. The next run I a going to try Elixir of Shadow Power instead of Arcane Elixir.

[vor_lord]

I've wondered about a hunter pet pull (a pet with dash) like is done in Molten Core for a few of the bosses.  The pet has a smaller aggro radius by far than the hunter themselves you could potentially pull her while leaving even more mobs unkilled (if she doesn't leash I wonder about taking her back into the gate even).  Not sure whoat that would do for the MC, maybe put it on the hunter.  I know you guys didn't have a hunter and you want strats that don't require one as well, but it's something I've been thinking about.
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Has to be worth a shot at least to see. That could speed things up.

[Tuftears]

Did the 45-min Baron run Sunday with an epic DPS warrior, a paladin in blues, a mage in blues and a few epics, an epic holy priest, and a resto/feral druid in blues (for feral) and a few epics. We finished with about 7 minutes to spare. I tanked the epic DPS warrior when she got MC'd.

I'd say as long as your warrior burns intimidating shout, as long as you have another class that can tank at the drop of a hat (no druids in healing cloth need apply, for instance) then getting the tank MC'd is not a big deal. Hybrid classes are great to fill in the slots around the 'holy trinity' of warrior/priest/mage for this reason.

Intimidating shout used against you would be a 'you lose' button, of course. :)

[Concillian]

Intimidating shout used against you would be a 'you lose' button, of course. :)
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That always gets burned either the last pull before her or the first rage using skill used against her (since almost everything in strat dead is immune to it, it doesn't matter that you use it)

[vor_lord]

Did the 45-min Baron run Sunday with an epic DPS warrior, a paladin in blues, a mage in blues and a few epics, an epic holy priest, and a resto/feral druid in blues (for feral) and a few epics.  We finished with about 7 minutes to spare.  I tanked the epic DPS warrior when she got MC'd.
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I bet you only get one MC with that group though. With no epics to speak of (we have a few non-raid "epics" and that's it, and the mage has Arcanist's boots off of Luci) we have been ending up with three MCs -- it just takes too long to kill her with 3, we need to reduce it to two. We might have done it in two the first time.

Maybe you're right though -- we could be messing ourselves up by being too tricky. Just full out DPS her when she's up, and as you say, tank her with the druid (if available) if the warrior gets MC'd. I did notice that the second and last try we made, that she was near down when the third MC came in.

[Treesh]

khgerg asked me a question I can't answer:

Is it possible to skip the 4-5 elites (can't remember) which come out of the Baron's building after the death of Ramstein and the skellie spawns?

Could you hide somewhere, sneak by them into the Baron's room and save yourself some time?

Heck, could you frost nova them, run in and aggro the Baron and have the doors keep them out?
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When Mogo has been out past the gates and out of combat and well out of range and LoS, they come out after her when everyone else who was in range is gone. They then go patrolling around if no one is in range or are all dead, but put you into combat from ridiculously far range while patrolling if you come back into the instance.

As for the frost nova idea, I have no idea.

[Concillian]

As for the frost nova idea, I have no idea.
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I would assume that the inner doors are closed until you kill them. However that's just a guess, I've never tried to bypass them, but if I were programming the encounter, that's how I would script it.

[swirly]

Okay after last night here is a revised and more detailed map with some tips added. The red line is the path you should ALWAYS walk, even when out of combat. I circled the most problematic adds that should be skipped in yellow.

Clicky
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So I've done this following the path you highlighted and I've done the original path (skipping the x's) with conc and some others. I feel that the original path was better than the one you highlighted. If you try to fight the ghouls to the left and skip the guys on the other side of the road, you almost always end up aggoing them. You just end up with too little room to fight. If you skip the ghouls though then you end up with plenty of room because they are kind of back in a lil niche.

After the trap I'm not really sure which way is better. I'm probably inclined to go the original way though cause it just feels safer to me. Either way though, I think this is something that needs to be brought up. We have you saying to go the path you highlighted and have other groups going the original way. This will cause confusion with people trying to do different things. So what does everybody think is the best route? It should be made clear which is the one that will be followed.

[vor_lord]

So I've done this following the path you highlighted and I've done the original path (skipping the x's) with conc and some others.  I feel that the original path was better than the one you highlighted.  If you try to fight the ghouls to the left and skip the guys on the other side of the road, you almost always end up aggoing them.  You just end up with too little room to fight.  If you skip the ghouls though then you end up with plenty of room because they are kind of back in a lil niche.

Sir Die, your motivation for doing the ghouls and not the casters is that they are more dangerous than the ghouls is that correct? I haven't found that the shadowcasters have been too much of a problem -- that's the pull that is done while two people are clearing the ziggurat. Then again I haven't tried it the other way yet (right now I'm inclined to stick to the original route).

After the trap I'm not really sure which way is better.  I'm probably inclined to go the original way though cause it just feels safer to me.  Either way though, I think this is something that needs to be brought up.  We have you saying to go the path you highlighted and have other groups going the original way.  This will cause confusion with people trying to do different things.  So what does everybody think is the best route?  It should be made clear which is the one that will be followed.
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I agree that it seems safer (this is where our first attempt wiped)... but if it can be pulled off it seems it would reduce some time. I haven't tried it and we were gunshy after our wipe the first try.

I think whoever is doing the pulling should tell people which way they are planning to go (there are two decision points). Whoever is pulling needs to be comfortable with what route they are going in.

[Klaus]

1.  Wipe at fountain before third ziggurat, 27 minutes left.  Definitely our best start, as the Baroness fight went very very well compared to the other attempts.  Tempting her to MC the mage who can ice block out went fine that time, didn't work other times.

I was quite surprised to see that the ice block trick works at all. I expected that the possessed target would have no control at all, and therefore could not activate the block. But since it does work, it brings to mind the question: Can Will of the Forsaken or the PvP trinket be used the same way? It would seem to be worth finding out. If so, this could really help shorten that encounter.

[Concillian]

Sir Die, your motivation for doing the ghouls and not the casters is that they are more dangerous than the ghouls is that correct?  I haven't found that the shadowcasters have been too much of a problem -- that's the pull that is done while two people are clearing the ziggurat. 
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Because we are doing the pull while clearing the zigg, I think it makes more sense to do the casters. It's a 2 elite + 1 skellie and that can be done a lot easier with 3 than 3 elites and no shackle.

Going on the right side of the fountain may be something to try, though it's difficult to NOT pull the three ghoul pull just past the trap on the left when you're pulling something else (either banshee or gargs.)

I think we should stick to our previous path before the spider boss, but perhaps an attempt to the right of the fountain makes sense.

[Tuftears]

Something else I wanted to add: the patrollers that come out of Baron's zig have *insane* aggro range. If you wipe on them and decide to finish the run off, don't let them come out of the courtyard, because they will aggro all the groups you left behind that are nearby. It's crazy!

Baroness: I think I remember two MCs on the last Baroness kill... We handled it, basically. You need a party with some redundancy, so if one person gets MC'd, it isn't game over. If you have a party of four clothies and one warrior, then you're risking a lot on the warrior not getting MC'd.

One thing I thought contributed a lot to the run was that the paladin supplied a bunch of consumables, like Elixir of the Mongoose (awesome for cat) and Elixir of Fortitude.

PVP trinkets were quite useful for breaking fears. I love that I can activate the PVP trinket in catform now!