Faction Champs

[Mordekhuul]

Any of the other 25 man guilds find the faction champions a lot more challenging this week or see a big difference in difficulty depending which of the 14 were up this week versus last week?

Our first week on the champs we one-shot them pretty easily, with little prep. This week, as a couple of Terenas Lurkers can support (thanks for coming guys), we wiped on them half the night and didn't get past.

Between the burst of the ret paladin, the warrior's bladestorms, and rogue + hunter DPS, we just couldn't really control them enough to keep people alive. By the time the first 1-2 mobs died we'd have 5+ dead, and always two of our best healers among them.

This was despite moving me from ret to prot so I could wrangle the rogue all fight with taunts and stuns, and having 1-2 other tanks doing similar things to the ret and warrior, having interrupts assigned to the 3 healers, and a kill order that (we changed throughout the night), but ended up being disc priest, then shaman, then tree....never quite got all 3 of those down before a wipe was called.

We had all of the champs last night except boomkin, warlock, holy paladin, and enh shaman, for reference.

We had non-healers doing a lot of dispelling so our 6 healers could focus on their task (even moved up to 7 healers at some point in the night) and had 2 interrupts on each of the healers not being focused down. Shaman were purging the focus target like mad. Polymorph was pretty useless, considering the amount of raid AOE that goes out incidentally (frost fever being spread, thunderclap, whatever else), but...

[Lissa]

Any of the other 25 man guilds find the faction champions a lot more challenging this week or see a big difference in difficulty depending which of the 14 were up this week versus last week?

Our first week on the champs we one-shot them pretty easily, with little prep. This week, as a couple of Terenas Lurkers can support (thanks for coming guys), we wiped on them half the night and didn't get past.

Between the burst of the ret paladin, the warrior's bladestorms, and rogue + hunter DPS, we just couldn't really control them enough to keep people alive. By the time the first 1-2 mobs died we'd have 5+ dead, and always two of our best healers among them.

This was despite moving me from ret to prot so I could wrangle the rogue all fight with taunts and stuns, and having 1-2 other tanks doing similar things to the ret and warrior, having interrupts assigned to the 3 healers, and a kill order that (we changed throughout the night), but ended up being disc priest, then shaman, then tree....never quite got all 3 of those down before a wipe was called.

We had all of the champs last night except boomkin, warlock, holy paladin, and enh shaman, for reference.

We had non-healers doing a lot of dispelling so our 6 healers could focus on their task (even moved up to 7 healers at some point in the night) and had 2 interrupts on each of the healers not being focused down. Shaman were purging the focus target like mad. Polymorph was pretty useless, considering the amount of raid AOE that goes out incidentally (frost fever being spread, thunderclap, whatever else), but...

The best way to deal with the faction champs is to find out which healer is most dangerous and deal with them first and work your way through them.

When it comes to the melee faction champions, the best way to deal with them is to kite them. When they latch onto someone, even if it is a healer, the person just needs to kite.

The two most dangerous faction champions, damagewise, are the Mage and the Hunter. The Warlock tends to use Hellfire a lot which is completely avoidable and the Shadow Priest doesn't do that much damage usually. The Mage hits hard (around 15k arcane blasts) and the Hunter hits hard and quick.

Ultimately your kill list should go:

Resto Druid -> Discipline Priest -> Resto Shaman -> Holy Paladin -> Mage -> Hunter -> Hunter's Pet -> Warlock -> Warlock's Pet -> Shadow Priest -> Moonkin -> Rogue -> Ret Pally -> Warrior -> Shaman -> DK

Surprisingly, the DK is the least worrisome of the Faction Champions as it doesn't seem to take full advantage of the DK powers.

[Frag]

I believe you're underestimating the rogue, Lissa. With shadowstep and a strong burst capability they can easily drop a cloth healer, even one that is pre-kiting.

Cheers,
~Frag B)

[Sir_Die_alot]

They felt pretty much the same to me. We kill the warlock pet first though so it doesn't play hell with healers. I'd also suggest not putting a paladin on the warrior, and instead another warrior. Whoever is spamming AOE and ruining CC might need a talking to. I know in the beginning I hold on my whirlwind at first because I know I'm going to screw things up more than help.

[Lissa]

I believe you're underestimating the rogue, Lissa. With shadowstep and a strong burst capability they can easily drop a cloth healer, even one that is pre-kiting.

Cheers,
~Frag B)

Discipline Priests do just fine at kiting the Rogue. You forget a lot of the tricks a Discipline Priest has for dealing with the damage a Rogue can do.

[Klaus]

Discipline Priests do just fine at kiting the Rogue. You forget a lot of the tricks a Discipline Priest has for dealing with the damage a Rogue can do.

Weird. Our Disc Priest was getting pwned by him. I guess our guild leader must need to L2P, eh?

[Mordekhuul]

Weird. Our Disc Priest was getting pwned by him. I guess our guild leader must need to L2P, eh?

The big danger of the rogue was that the few times he was free of me (taunt on DR and stun on cooldown) he often picked some target the ret paladin, ms warrior or more were also on, and that meant some 0.5s 100% to 0 kills on players here and there...with 1.5s kills being more common.

I think, based on some EJ feedback as well, we'll be putting our DK's on melee wrangling duty next time around. DK's have a ton of tricks for dealing with the melee, not least of which is ability to put chains of ice on them whenever they start heading back towards the raid.

Between them and our prot warrior locking one down, I'll probably be DPS again next time around and the melee will be a lot more controlled.

[Kevin]

Weird. Our Disc Priest was getting pwned by him. I guess our guild leader must need to L2P, eh?

Our guild leader who PvP's on a disc priest too. :) Or at least he used to, a lot.

[Concillian]

I really strongly feel as if you don't want to take all the healers out first. The insta-gib potential is too strong.

Priests are susceptible to focus fire, so yes, they are a good first target. Druids and shaman are reasonably easy to control with ~3 people dedicated to interrupts ( one on druid, two on shaman) plus a warlock (banish tree liberally fear otherwise.) and one of the DPS purging the focus target.

It's much easier to work after getting one or more of their deadly melee down, then switching back to healers once your interrupts and undispellable CC is on DR.

Warriors have limited defensive cooldowns, so are a good first DPS target (presuming he already burned bladestorm while you were killing the priest) The rogue being their other source of MS is another prime target.

I think a "control the healers, kill DPS" is the most repeatable strategy, but it takes some training. You also want some people doing NOTHING but chain spamming CC. The AI is programmed to dispell with very, very high priority. This means their only remaining dispeller after you kill the priest, the ret pally, will be running around cleansing and autoattacking. This reduces their DPS, as does the 0.5 seconds of fear or whatever you get before the cleanse.

Druids are good for this since cyclone doesn't get dispelled (but is very short duration at 6 seconds, then 3, then you may as well not cast a 3rd time). Even if the focus target gets cycloned, he can't be healed in a cyclone, so it lets cooldowns / energy / etc... come back for a nice burst as soon as the cyclone drops. If you have a Moonkin, just assign him to rotate cyclone all over. Occasionally roots if you need more dispel fodder, but he should be able to rotate a 6 / 3 cyclone on 3-4 NPCs indefinitely, so basically they're always at a -1. No, it can't consistently be the same person, but that's fine.


As for dealing with this group from the perspective of a priest who used to PvP a lot. It's not like PvP. With borrowed time up, mass dispel is about 0.35 second cast time. It would get interrupted by their mage. Fairly consistently. These are not like player situations These are robots programmed to do exact things (dispell CC INSTANTLY... sit on a counterspell so when you cast they will INSTANTLY interrupt.) Also in PvP, there are usually no more than 2-3 DPS (maybe 4 on a 5v5 zerg team) and resilience works against them in 25 man you are talking about *7* DPS and resilience doesn't work as well as in PvP because these aren't players, so certian portions of resilience don't work.

[Sir_Die_alot]

By not taking out healers first you allow them to reset the fight if a healer gets loose or an interrupt is missed. Going for a non healer is really hoping that the healers can't keep up with your damage which, if you are having trouble killing the healer, they can. You also assume blizzard made this fight fair with equal cooldowns. They did not. Their shaman gets to bloodlust multiple times during this fight is an example.

[Mordekhuul]

We killed the same comp in 3 pulls last night. Two major changes - put a DK in tank mode on the ret paladin and warrior, our warrior tank on the tree to lock it down while we killed the first 2 healers, and our feral took care of the rogue, I believe.

Aside from those choices, our second major change was my toon dying in the first 20 seconds...leaving me free to watch the nameplates/symbols of the mobs running around and call out target changes so players could start kiting early.

I think we'll handle this next time by having each of the controllers assigned to the dangerous mobs call out target changes on vent...rather than my dying.

[Lissa]

our warrior tank on the tree to lock it down while we killed the first 2 healers

Seperate it from the group with a Death Grip or two and Banish. If you have two DKs, have on Death Grip the tree to them and then when the tree is in range of the other DK, standing near where the raid starts from with the Warlock ready, Death Grip again and try to stun/root so Warlock can banish it in place. You can get 17.5 seconds of Banish on tree before it can get back in the fight (as you cannot dispel Banish due to the nature of the spell).

The key to the fight is getting the healers seperated as much as possible so they can't help heal each other, using snares and roots (frost trap, chains of ice, earthbind totem, etc) and stuns. Using AoE fears to disrupt (Howl of Terror, Psychic Scream, and Intimidating Shout) and soft CC (fear, poly, hex) to disrupt casts.

[Pantalaimon]

It's much easier to work after getting one or more of their deadly melee down, then switching back to healers once your interrupts and undispellable CC is on DR.

I have to strongly agree with Conc. I don't think we've ever wiped on non-heroic FC with mains, but we never kill a healer first. The fight simply doesn't get any "easier" until you kill a DPS. Kill all the healers you want, but you're still all tense due to the one-shot possibility of hunter + rogue + mage all picking the same target and bursting them down in 0.5 seconds.

One particular strategy that may help is to "chain" death grips. Place a DK 30 yards from your kill target (we usually kill the 2H warrior first if he's up, enhancement shaman if the warrior isn't), and another DK 30 yards further from the first, with virtually the rest of the raid. Lay 2 frost traps between them and your raid, and pull with death grip - the second DK then pulls the kill target to your raid, and you blow heroism. With decent dps, you should be able to kill your target before their healers break their CC and run the 60 yards to you (while snared).

Edit: just saw Lissa suggested the same strategy, except pulling the tree out and banishing it. Honestly, you have so long until the rest of the mobs get to you I'd just kill it, even if it's a healer. Just might have to run a bit more interference on the rest of the FCs to get the healer down before you have to scatter and kite, etc.

[Mavfin]

<Don't kill a healer first>

I think you just have to play it by ear. Both times I've killed them, we did a healer first. I think you just have to play it by what your group composition is, and what you're up against. No one strategy works every time with every group.

[Sir_Die_alot]

So now I've done this on 25 hard. We still started with a healer (holy priest) but then started working on the more problematic dps while people CCed and interrupted the other 2 healers. It was my job to lock down the rogue as much as possible who I think is the game breaker for most people. After chasing this turd all night I'll give some insights:

The rogue is definitely a fixate mechanic. He picks someone and chases them until they die so whoever is targeted needs to kite the rogue (unless he targets someone in prot plate then the fight gets a LOT easier). The rogue will change targets from time to time. The times it seemed random were maybe once per fight and might have been related to someone getting too far. The other more consistent reason was someone was low health. If someone is low health the rogue (and I think all dps) will turn on that person. The rogue however has high burst and shadow step making him the most dangerous. This is why you need someone on the rogue full time who can stun. When this happened it was my job to charge/intercept and control the rogue while the targeted person got away. A dk to assist in these times is really helpful.

For those of you who see this fight on 25 hard good luck. Its honestly the hardest fight I've done since 60 naxx. Un nerfed sunwell might have been harder but I missed that.:(

[Lissa]

So now I've done this on 25 hard. We still started with a healer (holy priest) but then started working on the more problematic dps while people CCed and interrupted the other 2 healers. It was my job to lock down the rogue as much as possible who I think is the game breaker for most people. After chasing this turd all night I'll give some insights:

The rogue is definitely a fixate mechanic. He picks someone and chases them until they die so whoever is targeted needs to kite the rogue (unless he targets someone in prot plate then the fight gets a LOT easier). The rogue will change targets from time to time. The times it seemed random were maybe once per fight and might have been related to someone getting too far. The other more consistent reason was someone was low health. If someone is low health the rogue (and I think all dps) will turn on that person. The rogue however has high burst and shadow step making him the most dangerous. This is why you need someone on the rogue full time who can stun. When this happened it was my job to charge/intercept and control the rogue while the targeted person got away. A dk to assist in these times is really helpful.

For those of you who see this fight on 25 hard good luck. Its honestly the hardest fight I've done since 60 naxx. Un nerfed sunwell might have been harder but I missed that.:(

IMO, the Ret Paladin is the most dangerous of the melee oriented FCs. We've seen him not follow standard GC mechanics where he did a melee attack, judgement, and divine storm all within 0.05 second period which will pretty much kill any person barring someone in tank gear (and it did kill one of our Bears in caster form to do a cyclone).

Definitely, when it comes to normal and hard, the kill method for normal should be to kill the healers then all the remainder, but in hard, it should be more along the lines of control the healers till you get a couple DPS down, then kill one healer while continuing to control the others, kill more DPS, then look at if it's easier to continue working on DPS or take out another healer.