Thoughts on Majordomo Executus

[lemekim]

While this might not seem of much help to you, I do suggest you try to go over the fight, try to understand his abilities, find out what seem to be the weaknesses of your raid, and analyze why you are having trouble. Depending on what the problems stem from, you can adjust your tactic to that.

Example:

You mentioned that a lot of time Domo is not under control - he walks around killing people. Now, we know that this is because on teleports Domo loses all aggro on everyone around him. Usually, you would want tanks to pick him right back up, but the issue here is that Domo is fast (so slight lag will make him go out of range of taunt) and that it gets resisted often. Placing another tank might solve second part, but it still does not address the first.

So, what you can do is get a class that can quickly and reliably pull Domo back to tanks, while being able to take some damage. We prefer to use a Hunter with distracting shot - they have the range, the +hit items to ensure the hit, and it generates enough aggro so that a heal or two from the core of the raid won't be enough to overcome the aggro. And with mail, they can take a hit or two before tank pulls it off.

Example:

One thing, as someone already mentioned, the shields can be either Damage Shields or Magic Reflect shields. While you don't know which one is next, you do know when it will happen, so if you poly right before the shield, mages should have little trouble keeping the Healers sheeped.

Mages can miss the poly on healers sometimes. Sure, it can happen, even with the 5 second warning - the sheep can get resisted or the mage might miss the timer. While it shouldn't happen, you can still ensure that it won't happen again.

I) Curse of Shadows can help to eliminate resists.
II) The warrior that was tanking first mob that was killed can switch to "sheep-guarding" duty - just stand there, and if a sheep does break loose, he can taunt it (without attacking) and keep it on him for a few second necessary to resheep.

Third Example:

The kill order does make a difference, but one has to recognize what the difference is. 1 elite - 4 healers - 3 elites order is easiest to understand and execute, but can put a lot of strain on your healers, and does require quite a few tanks.

2 Elites - Healers - etc often requires quite a bit of coordination from the raid (burning multiple elites down to low % and keeping them alive), and can get a bit messy, but it requires less healing then above

Last one - 3 Elites - 1 Elite to 15% - kill 1 Healer - finish 1 Elite - 3 healers - is easiest on your healing, because at one point you are only tanking 1 elite, which can give you time to regroup and res and regain mana. It is my favorite method, but it does require the tanks to be on the ball at the end and pick up the 3 healers.

Of course, what works for you is for you to decide.

So in the future, you might find that you cannot rely on a lot of strategies posted on the board - because your raid's strengths and weaknesses are different - so you have to tailor your strategy for your particular raid (and by you, you mean whoever is planning your raids). Also, a lot of small things get omitted in those strategies, because the encounters become so complex, so you have to find out those on your own. Identify the weak spots in your system, look for what can be done to prevent them or at least provide extra security.

[Soraia]

2. 20% life rule on adds to hard to implement. The guards are hitting to hard to tank them all down, we should be focuing on FOCUSED DPS on targets that have wariors/paladins on them to hold aggro. all of the raid waiting for dps targets and mark will be really necessary.

I respectfully disagree. The 20% life rule is not too hard. We do this with the Thekal encounter in Zul'Gurub already. (I believe this is done for core hound packs as well but I've not been on a pre-Garr MC run since before Labor Day.)

I believe we can overcome the issue about tanking the Flamewalker Elite guards. This is really a mana issue and we healers can find a way to manage this.

The bit about burning the mobs down to 20% before popping the last sheep makes sense to me. We have a relatively controlled environment at that point that we should make use of. By burning them down to 20% ahead of time, we can burn them down that much faster when we no longer have any priests sheeped.

[Mirajj]

I'm concerned that Mirajj's idea of running through Domo and his coterie will result in a lot of point-blank damage to that team and flatten them pretty quickly.  However, I'm having a small issue picturing this scenario in my mind so I could be wrong.
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I think that I'm simply not explaining it well.

Let me start off with what I saw last night. Anadrol and Starkos are shielded and run to engage Domo...but run around the pit, proxyaggro'ing the first elite and bringing all 8 on top of them. The pullers on the pulled side now have a lot of things on their side. The pullers on the far side are now out of range and have to reposition themselves to try for aggro inducing hits.

On top of all that, no damage has been done to Domo yet (a body pull produces almost no aggro, anything aggro generating will top the hatelist over the bodypuller), so the first one to hit for damage (A pulling hunter) gets the party pack on top of him. So now we have a big cluster of 9 mad elites on top of a few small people. We saw the results of that last night.

What I was proposing we try was that Anadrol and Starkos run right through the pit to engage Domo. The shields should protect them from the pit damage. When Anadrol gets in the first hit, the pullers can peel the Elites, and the mages can make their sheep magic happen.

Alternately, another thought could be to have Anadrol and Starkos on the non-Domo side of the pit, and have Anadrol shoot Domo, pulling him through the pit. On that shot, the hunters peel their Elites off, and the mages go to town.

All sorts of things to try.

I also like Lemekim's third kill order up there. Sounds like it'd be the easiest on everyone. The priests, I noticed as we did kill one, went down pretty easily.

[Boutros]

What the Tich Basin does is kill 3 elites, take the fourth down to 20%. Then break one sheep and take the healer to 20%. Then break a second sheep and kill it, hopefully the elite and healer you left at 20% will die at almost exactly the same time as the second sheep. Then it's a fairly simple matter to take down the last two healers, assuming you have some healers and at least 3 warriors alive.

As far as tanking Domo is concerned, if you have two hunters distracting shot him every time he wipes aggro he is really easy for one person to tank. When I tanked him I basically just stood by the hunters and taunted every time Domo came over to beat on them. In my opinion tanking Domo is much easier and less stressful than offtanking. It's helpful to have a druid or paladin/shaman running around trying to stand inside Domo as teleport bait, makes it so the warrior tanking Domo doesn't have to run around as much.

[Tuftears]

Random thought: the healers can be sapped. (really!)

[WildFire]

Concur with Gort, but I don't have first hand experience doing it. Was watching a friend playing on Proudmoore do exactly the same thing.

Barring a mod (some would it would be 'unclean') that would allow you to monitor your designated sheep in another window whilst you target something else, the role of a mage is just to stand there watching and reapplying Polymorph until such time it's broken, at whcih point, as mentioned, you can go back to DPS.

Thing is, it was mentioned that to have that many mages out of commission for DPS to be on sheep duty requires that there be a fair number of rogues and hunters to keep up with the dps-ing required.

Question is, do we have enough non-mage dps to do it this way?

[Mirajj]

Question is, do we have enough non-mage dps to do it this way?
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We consistantly field a minimum of 5 hunters, and 2 rogues, usually more. In addition to 5+ mages. We don't have DPS problems. ;)

[savaughn]

Concur with Gort, but I don't have first hand experience doing it. Was watching a friend playing on Proudmoore do exactly the same thing.

Barring a mod (some would it would be 'unclean') that would allow you to monitor your designated sheep in another window whilst you target something else, the role of a mage is just to stand there watching and reapplying Polymorph until such time it's broken, at whcih point, as mentioned, you can go back to DPS.

Thing is, it was mentioned that to have that many mages out of commission for DPS to be on sheep duty requires that there be a fair number of rogues and hunters to keep up with the dps-ing required.

Question is, do we have enough non-mage dps to do it this way?
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Actually, you can keep your mob sheeped and add dps depending on where you're standing, what mob you're on, and what one is getting focused fire. It's a bit of positioning and you won't get all 4 mages helping (someone always gets stuck in the back). Getting 2 helping out is pretty straightforward, though.

The easiest one is AM and poly (but then I'm subtlety specced so I do AM as my base anyway). For some reason if you're throwing ice you really want to finish that bolt before you resheep and that's a bad instinct. Just do AM if you can and keep your eye on your healer. If it's time to throw a poly, tap the move forward key to break the AM and throw your poly. Make sure it's all good and ready to move on, make sure you're retargetted right, and throw another AM.

AM is also pretty cool because of PoM. Hit the PoM button and it will just sit up there. Then throw your AM's. They won't trigger PoM. When it's time to throw your poly, the poly will be an instant. Kind of cool. It's not that long of a fight tho, so PoM is only going to be up twice.

[Alrin]

I'm just curious.
Why dont you have a paladin run in for a divine shield pull?
Then peel, sheep and kill adds.

[anadrol]

I respectfully disagree.  The 20% life rule is not too hard.  We do this with the Thekal encounter in Zul'Gurub already.  (I believe this is done for core hound packs as well but I've not been on a pre-Garr MC run since before Labor Day.)

I believe we can overcome the issue about tanking the Flamewalker Elite guards.  This is really a mana issue and we healers can find a way to manage this.

The bit about burning the mobs down to 20% before popping the last sheep makes sense to me.  We have a relatively controlled environment at that point that we should make use of.  By burning them down to 20% ahead of time, we can burn them down that much faster when we no longer have any priests sheeped.
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Thats cool I think that the real problem is Domo running around, and that anytime we can save mana for the priests its preferred. Seemed like healers were dying more than we were oom so the issue didn't really come up, but 20% should be easier and more viable the more geared we get our consistant tanks and the less healers die.

[Pesmerga]

Thats cool I think that the real problem is Domo running around, and that anytime we can save mana for the priests its preferred.  Seemed like healers were dying more than we were oom so the issue didn't really come up, but 20% should be easier and more viable the more geared we get our consistant tanks and the less healers die.
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Note: I nominate me to pull Domo back to the tanks. :D

[anadrol]

I'm just curious.
Why dont you have a paladin run in for a divine shield pull?
Then peel, sheep and kill adds.
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We tried this with starkos and the positioning of the pally and hunters was a bit off first try, we will most likely go this route in the future alrin.

[lemekim]

Random thought: the healers can be sapped.  (really!)
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Even more random thought - you can use Goblin Rocket Helm on them as well. Verified through live testing!

[Icebird]

Our group managed to kill him last night on our 4th attempt. I'll give my thoughts in the hope you might find them useful.

Our initial kill order was 3 elites - 1 elite to 20% - 1 healer - *sheeps break* - last elite - 3 healers.

I think this was less taxing on our healers, but we were having problems with warriors grabbing targets when the first healer died and the sheep broke.

For our third and fourth attempts we opted for the battle-tested 1 elite - 4 healers - 3 elites approach. It was probably more intense for our healing battery, but simpler to communicate what everyone had to do.

For the first 3 attempts we had 5 warriors. We had two hunters assigned to pull Majordomo back to his tank when he wiped aggro. For the 4th attempt, another warrior arrived and we used him to shadowtank Domo.

We had two out of combat rezzers. Being pulled into combat was an issue. The attempt was probably saved when one of the rezzers used a Soulstone, shielded to stay out of combat, then got some people up.

For the pull, we used a paladin with Divine Shield. He got aggro long before he got to the fire pit. We had a hunter assigned to each tank to pull their target to them. For the most part the pull seemed to go fairly smoothly.

Chris

[MongoJerry]

Random thought: the healers can be sapped.  (really!)

Yes, but there's no benefit to doing that over sheeping them from the start and if Improved Sap fails, then all the guards hit the rogue hard enough to kill him, usually before the rogue has a chance to vanish. We tried starting off the fight that way a few times and ended up finding that the extra chaos and risk wasn't worth any potential benefit, if any.

[Tuftears]

Well, the reason I suggested it was positioning: if you sap the healers, then they won't be moving when the pull starts, which separates them from the elites and Majordomo, and they'll be widely spaced. Of course you still have to separate the elites...

[Quark]

Well, the reason I suggested it was positioning: if you sap the healers, then they won't be moving when the pull starts, which separates them from the elites and Majordomo, and they'll be widely spaced.  Of course you still have to separate the elites...
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Aye, but that 10% fail always comes at the worst times, and we'll never have 4 Improved Sap Rogues on the same run, so it could only be partially used anyway.

[Zippyy]

I wish I had something to add, but since I am not a healer or a tank, I am not in the inner "loop", so to speak. I understand the strategy, but am unclear where I fit in beyond nuking the called targets, if anywhere. One thing I did notice was that when I think we were supposed to be burning the elites down to 20%, no one called DPS OFF, and we ended up killing it. It was also unclear as to whether or not we were actually supposed to be burning it down to 20%.

Also. I request that the raid leadership place me in Bolty's group as a rule of thumb. His attitude is sub-par and only more time with Zippyy will cure it!

Thirdly, people keep healing me while I'm bandaging. Several times I saw one or two green +1000s pop up over my head while I was at 80% or more. This only happened once during the Domo encounter, but it is generally completely unnecessary to heal warlocks who are lifetapping for mana, especially mid-bandage.

[Bob the Beholder]

The guild I run with on Gorefiend is also starting attempts at Majordomo, as we have just now downed Golemagg for the first time tonight, and made a preliminary attempt on Majordomo. (Golemagg should've gone down last week. He was at about five percent when our MT went down, and we got him to less than 1 percent before the last of us fell. And we only had 36 people then. One more player of any class and he'd have dropped.)

Our discussion of the fight lies here. (Or, the beginnings of it.) I've linked them to this thread, to try to maliciously leech power from you all.

Good luck to all of us fighting this guy in the future. :)

[Zippyy]

We consistantly field a minimum of 5 hunters, and 2 rogues, usually more. In addition to 5+ mages. We don't have DPS problems. ;)
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And also Tahapenes, who does enough damage for 5 mages.