Molten Core, Lurker Style!

[LochnarITB]

Some people responded before I posted the 4-8 plan so I just want to see where current interest is.
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4pm server time? I think I can get my lazy butt moving by then. Is there really need of a frost mage though?? It is so hot in there, I'd probably just melt and then everyone would be stepping in Lochpuddle! :o ;)

[Quark]

So, for those who don't know, we didn't do too well :) We couldn't get passed the 3rd fight, two Firelords together.

For those who were there, some observations:
1) Apparantly those 3 mobs (1 solo Firelord and 2 Firelords together) are random spawns. So it would have been much easier if we had a spawn that wasn't a Firelord that could just be offtanked (or banished) while we handled the elemental <_<

2) If we're doing two, the Blizzards must come down. Between the Lava Spawns and the Firelords, it seems the only way to ensure that the battle will end at some point.

3) I think we should definately be split on Assists if we're fighting two Firelords. When people didn't assist right (still) on the last attempt, we had about a 3 second period after the first two Lava Spawns went down before more appeared. To split the assist correctly would take alot of work and coordination between the two MAs, but as long as everyone follows them it seems like it should work.

4) At one point we gotta say "this isn't working." If we have 3 Lava Spawns out, chances are we're gonna fail. Three means we already fell behind ... one Lava Spawn split ... so they're only gonna split again. At the point 3 are out, would it be worth saying "Full DPS" on one Firelord just to take one out? I really think we can handle two Firelords at once, but if something goes wrong (Rule One) I think a wipe where we take out a Firelord is much preferable to a half-wipe of people escaping just to do it over again.

[Sword_of_Doom]

4pm server time?&nbsp; I think I can get my lazy butt moving by then.&nbsp; Is there really need of a frost mage though??&nbsp; It is so hot in there, I'd probably just melt and then everyone would be stepping in Lochpuddle! :o ;)
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I know you have already tried MOlten Core, but Frost Mages are much desired in Molten Core. MOst of the Mages in my guild are Frost Mages. So Lochnar you are a very valuable Mage for the Core :)

[LochnarITB]

2) If we're doing two, the Blizzards must come down.&nbsp; Between the Lava Spawns and the Firelords, it seems the only way to ensure that the battle will end at some point.
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The problem there was that the two firelords kept being separated. The best try we had was when the two were held together. Blizzard certainly can't hit that whole room.

There also was a problem with contradiction. I was on TeamSpeak as were apparently quite a few people. However, there were only a few voices to be heard, either because, like I, they weren't mic'ed or the bandwidth was insufficient. On TS, Darian was indicating that he didn't feel aggro was being grabbed on the firelords with blizzard but raid chat was saying it was. Perhaps only the leader(s) should be on mic and replies to them made in raid chat.

My suggestion for the next attempt at 2 firelords would be the following. Two MT's and two MA's. The two MT's would each grab a firelord and they would make sure they are pulled together. At the first appearance of spawn(s), each MA would grab one and the call for blizzard would come. If the MA's can hold the spawn with the firelords, stacked blizzards should wipe out the spawns quickly and provide significant damage to the lords. The 8 groups would be split even/odd on the MA's so that any non-blizzard/tank damage would be directed to take down the most pressing threat, be that the current spawn target or a single firelord when no spawns are present. If blizzard does grab aggro, then something else would have to be considered.

So Lochnar you are a very valuable Mage for the Core :)
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Oh, but you're wrong. I'm a valuable mage anywhere! People just haven't realized that yet. ;)

[Darian]

On TS, Darian was indicating that he didn't feel aggro was being grabbed on the firelords with blizzard but raid chat was saying it was.

That's accurate. On the occasions I stayed up and was able to grab aggro in the first place, I was having no trouble retaining aggro on the firelords with blizzard raining down. In addition, my observation -- and that of the healers as well -- was that the firelords themselves weren't doing a tremendous amount of damage to the tanks beyond their initial onslaught. They didn't have to start pouring on the heals until spawns started nailing us with AoE.

This, by the way, jibes with how things work in any old instance: if the tank grabs aggro on one mob in an AoE situation, the tank is going to hold it while AoE comes down. Casters don't die because of the mob the tank has locked down, but because of the (x) others the tank can't cycle taunts on rapidly enough.

We'll get it. :)

[martini]

2) If we're doing two, the Blizzards must come down.&nbsp; Between the Lava Spawns and the Firelords, it seems the only way to ensure that the battle will end at some point.

4) At one point we gotta say "this isn't working."&nbsp; If we have 3 Lava Spawns out, chances are we're gonna fail.&nbsp; Three means we already fell behind ... one Lava Spawn split ... so they're only gonna split again.&nbsp; At the point 3 are out, would it be worth saying "Full DPS" on one Firelord just to take one out?&nbsp; I really think we can handle two Firelords at once, but if something goes wrong (Rule One) I think a wipe where we take out a Firelord is much preferable to a half-wipe of people escaping just to do it over again.
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I agree. I think that part of the problem with not having enough Blizzards was that we simply didn't have a ton of AoE in the group. We had quite a few hunters, but only one warlock, and only 4 mages for the majority of our attempts, which seems to be about half the normal mage complement for a MC group. The idea of wiping but taking down one Firelord was also brought up by one of the other Basin hunters on the run (Arathandir, IIRC), and with the number of hunters and rogues we had, it might have been possible.

It was disappointing to not get past that pull, but I still had a good time, and would like to thank mjdoom for setting up the run, and for helping many (including me!) get the MC discovery quest done. It was fun to group up with Lurkers, Carpe Aurum, and Natural Selection members as well. :)

[Ynir]

Spangles is a lvl 60 defense warrior, guilded with the Circle of Assassins, who was invited by Flyndar to join this raid. She posted the following about her experience in MC:

Spangles joined her friends in the Lurkers and the Amazon Basin for a trial run in Molten Core. There were 40 in the raid, with a few pickups (such as myself) from other guilds.

A good summary of what to expect as an MC noob is found here:

http://www.theamazonbasin.com/wow/forums/i...?showtopic=4964

Our run did not get far. We literally did not get past the instance entrance. The problem was that after pulling the first Firelord, the second and third were linked, and no tactic that we tried could pull just one. Hunters and rogues tried and failed at this many times.

The Firelords generate Lava Spawns that generate fierce AOE, and if these are not dispactched immediately they each split into two, etc, and a wipe ensues.

Another problem was that in the whole group of 40 there were only 3 warriors. Two of us were protection, and the third A/F. If we could have fielded 4 warriors, one of each kind on each of the two Firelords, the protection warriors (MTs) could have tanked the Firelords while the MA/assists helped the casters exterminate the Lava Spawns. As it was, the Lava Spawns always got out of control, although towards the end of the session we almost succeeded in handling a pull of two Firelords.

My personal experience was that tanking a Firelord was easier than tanking Drakk. They move quickly, but they will stay put when locked down and don't do as much damage, by themselves, as Drakk does. But the AOE from the Lava Spawns killed me in three seconds flat. That released the Firelord, who then rampaged around in the backfield with his spawns.

It seems that it would be best for the two MTs each to pull a Firelord simultaneously, lock them down close to each other at a predetermined distance from the back of the cave, where the casters are waiting.

The casters must hold their fire for a few seconds to allow the tanks to lock aggro. The first wipes started when the casters opened up as soon as the Firelords came within range. This tore the Firelords from the tanks, and started a rampage.

The MT/assists and the casters must then take out each and every Lava Spawn as soon as it appears. I don't think that a priest can restore a tank's entire health bar every three seconds, so prevention is necessary rather than cure. We came close to doing this towards the end.

The usual personality problems occured as the afternoon dragged on. The Lurkers and Basiners behaved professionally at all times, but some of the pickups began to disregard orders, and to clown around, in ways that would never occur on a CoA raid.

I don't think we can field 40 lvl 60 players, at least for a while, and I can't imagine succeeding with fewer. I think we should consider raiding jointly with the Lurkers and the Basiners, at first.

I have been in both guilds, briefly, and I know both groups from many years of playing D1/D2/LOD with them, and posting on their respective websites. Both groups know the game inside out, and their ethics are impeccable. Conversely, I think that both of those groups would benefit from working with CoA, since we have experience at raiding that only a few guilds can match.

If guild officers wish to consider this type of collaboration they could discussi it with Flyndar, from the Lurkers, or Tuftears, who runs the Basin.

I should hasten to say that I am not a guild officer, nor am I authorized to engage in any official diplomacy whatever. Nevertheless, if officials in the Lurkers or the Basin wish to open negotiations, they should contact Xelobain, the CEO for Circle of Assassins.

[Onan]

That's accurate.&nbsp; On the occasions I stayed up and was able to grab aggro in the first place, I was having no trouble retaining aggro on the firelords with blizzard raining down.&nbsp; In addition, my observation -- and that of the healers as well -- was that the firelords themselves weren't doing a tremendous amount of damage to the tanks beyond their initial onslaught.&nbsp; They didn't have to start pouring on the heals until spawns started nailing us with AoE.

This, by the way, jibes with how things work in any old instance: if the tank grabs aggro on one mob in an AoE situation, the tank is going to hold it while AoE comes down.&nbsp; Casters don't die because of the mob the tank has locked down, but because of the (x) others the tank can't cycle taunts on rapidly enough.

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I was there as my Main (lvl 60 Priest).

My take on the raid was that is was a frustrating, good time. I enjoyed the run. The last pull of pull 3 seemed to go much better than the other attempts. I was among the first to go down in that pull, and it was a spawn that got me. The MT's were not hard to keep up, once we sorted out the LoS issues. Really the spawns were the issue.

More AoE? That seems most reasonable, blizzard was really effective. I think perhaps assigning some of the heals to the AoE'rs might have gone a long way to keep them alive, especially since the MTs were not that hard to keep up. We had a lot of healers, probably too many, so assigning a few to that task should have been pretty simple. I also think that the direct DPS classes should have been instructed to ignore the spawns. Not once did we even really dent a firelord, as were trying to get rid of the never ending spawns.

Just kill one at any cost? I don't think we could have blasted one of the firelords to death even expecting a wipe. Again too many healers in the mix for that. The mass silence would have have made that almost impossible.

[Gebo]

Someone had asked for the link to the Conquest site showing the firelord video. This is a great site for reviewing strategies used in MC.

http://conquest.teamgbu.com/strats/moltenc...t_Fire_Lord.php

[LochnarITB]

http://conquest.teamgbu.com/strats/moltenc...t_Fire_Lord.php
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Near the bottom of that page is this line.

Done right, both lava spawns are killed before they can split.

Does that mean that each lord only puts out one spawn? The video seems to show the first spawns being killed and then another set coming but it is possible that the later spawns are splits off of one or both of the first that didn't get killed. At what point do they stop spitting out spawns? Blizzard being as mana hungry as it is, it is possible that we would run out before the last waves come. There was a lot of blizzard happening in that video so they must have had more mages then we went in with.

While I wasn't really sure I wanted to see the chaos of end game raids, I found that the learning process we were going through together was fun. It also has this little gnome hot and bothered to end his frustration by seeing a double firelord pull go down. :angry: B)

[Quark]

Does that mean that each lord only puts out one spawn?
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I think they mean that for each round of lava spawns the Firelords put out, the strategy should take them both out before the Lava Spawns themselves split. Lava Spawns coming from Firelords wasn't a problem for us, Lava Spawns coming from Lava Spawns was :blink:

[LochnarITB]

Lava Spawns coming from Firelords wasn't a problem for us
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We never got close to the end of the battle. The point of my question was this: What happens if most or all of the magi go OOM and then the lords pop another set of spawn? All damage dealers need to be sure they are focusing on the spawns, when present, but will that be enough to take them down before they split without blizzard?

[Arethor]

We never got close to the end of the battle.&nbsp; The point of my question was this:&nbsp; What happens if most or all of the magi go OOM and then the lords pop another set of spawn?&nbsp; All damage dealers need to be sure they are focusing on the spawns, when present, but will that be enough to take them down before they split without blizzard?
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If we have enough mages we could try rotating blizzard casting so the sets of mages can regen some mana. Also limiting blizzard casting to when spawns pop. Not having a mage high enough, i'm not sure whether this will make a difference or not, but just thoughts off the top of my head.


Here are my thoughts about Warlocks in MC in response to some comments that were made and also my own experience.

I am a SoulStone dispenser and Imp Totem ™ placer. I'm also good at putting Curse of Elements on the mobs so blizzards make them ouch more. Warlock AoE is useless as it is all Fire based.

The only thing i can really contribute that seems to make a difference is Corruption/Shadowbolt and hoping for a bunch of Nightfall procs, but this would also sap my mana causing me to have to Lifetap or sit idle shooting my Fire wand.

One thing that might be worth trying that might make another warlock useful. I tried banishing the Firelord on our first double pull, no dice. It was immune. However, I never tried banishing the spawns. Next time in it might be useful for me to try a banish on a spawn so we have some sort of CC going on and we can focus on one spawn and the 2 firelords.

All in all, great time even though we didn't get far. We seemed more effective with our 35 man group than the 40 man. I'd love to go in again sometime soon and give it another shot, because I believe we can all do it if we all follow the suggested strategies of the leaders. When this happened we tightened up and got one firelord down to about 55% and the other down to around 75% Not exactly a phenomenal result, but much better than where we were and with some more refinement of strategy we should be able to handle a double pull.

The Double MT/MA bunching for Blizzard combination sounds like the most viable strategy to me. On our last pull when we split the assisting we controlled the spawns pretty well for a while, probably until we all started focusing on one again. I suggest 2 or 3 squads. 1 squad for each lava spawn and possibly a third to continue some DPS on the Firelords. It's great to control outbreaks of spawns, but if we're not doing something to take down the firelords other than the tanks that are holding them, they're gonna keep spawning. It's something that I think can only be answered by more trial runs. The AoE from Blizzard on the spawns might be substantial enough to make a 3rd squad uneccessary.

[Drasca]

&nbsp; I'm also good at putting Curse of Elements on the mobs so blizzards make them ouch more.&nbsp; [right][snapback]76796[/snapback][/right]

Sorry buddy, Curse of Elements doesn't work for frost. You've been wasting your time and mana.

Curse of Shadows / Shadowbolt spam most mobs.

Some of the obsidian elemental ragers are banish-able. Good raid leaders will announce when to banish.

[Treesh]

Sorry buddy, Curse of Elements doesn't work for frost. You've been wasting your time and mana.
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Have the tooltips changed then? http://www.thottbot.com/index.cgi?k=804 Says fire and frost there.

Edit: Or is this another case of a skill not actually doing what the tooltip says?

[mjdoom]

Now that this is getting closer I just want to try to confirm some numbers of at least high interest people.&nbsp; Some people responded before I posted the 4-8 plan so I just want to see where current interest is.&nbsp; The Carpe Aurum list I will assume is complete and correct but any Lurkers who are interested I would appreciate you replying again just so I can be sure.&nbsp; Thanks.

- mjdoom
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I wasn't sure where best to put this response so here it goes.

First off I am glad everyone (that I have heard from anyway) enjoyed themselves. A fun learning experience was what I was looking for and it looks like many others as well. The postmortem discussion here is also an excellent outlet after the fact. Only so much can be efficiently communicated during the run and it's easier to look at things after the fact, pick them apart, and come up with a better approach. It was mentally taxing on me to try to keep everyone together but in the end I feel that it was well worth it.

In response to some of the ideas presented here: First I think the idea of parking the two firelords together and blizzarding when spawns are out is a real winner. We were a bit short on mage power on our run which certainly didn't help. Hopefully we can get at least 6 mages next time blizzarding on a well defined schedule and that will take care of the spawns. The firelords will then die in due time. Having a warlock calling the blizzards is also probably a good idea as their aoe isn't as useful in that case so they can probably divert a little bit of attention to just calling shots for the mages (reducing how much they have to think about). Sometimes specific roles have to be played by people. I know that the healers had both a healing rotation and some people designated to dispel/cleanse and not heal as much. If we identify the proper roles and fill them it will help to be successful.

If for some reason we are still short on mages (and high on hunters :)) we might want to consider the "wipe for the sake of progress" approach and just try to kill one of the firelords. Even in this case I would still advocate the use of blizzard though to try to slow down the damage that the spawns are doing.

I've said this elsewhere but in general I think that will be one of the hardest non-boss pulls in the entire instance. Bliz seems to have a penchant for putting some of the hardest pulls early in instances to test your mettle and allow passage further along. We were making progress even as numbers dropped last time and we will get it in due time. As we get better at certain fights they become easier and progress is made. In due time and with the effort we can move through the instance more efficiently like some of the high-end raiding guilds. It will just take us a longer period of time but I enjoy the process.

For the future I'd like to continue to run these runs in roughly 4 hour chunks. There are a couple of reasons for this: 1) (selfish, personal reason) I won't be able to block off entire days on weekends really at all. 2) It generally allows more people to participate. Just like my selfish personal reason other people have similar commitments. Smaller chunks of time will allow more people to participate. As we make progress we will be able to accomplish more in less time. With any luck we might progress to the point where we can go in and clear some areas for fun and loot on weeknights even.

That said, keep your eyes open for the next assault on the Molten Core. There are some ideas afoot on how to better organize guild activities in the future and I'd like to somehow mesh this in with that. Weekend afternoons/nights will probably be the most common times. If you have any questions or concerns about these times please don't hesitate to contact me through PM and or in game means. Hopefully in the future there will be others coordinating this along with me so that you have other people to talk to about this as well.

So once again, thank you all for coming and we'll do it again soon.

- mjdoom

[Bob the Beholder]

Sorry buddy, Curse of Elements doesn't work for frost. You've been wasting your time and mana.

Curse of Shadows / Shadowbolt spam most mobs.

Some of the obsidian elemental ragers are banish-able. Good raid leaders will announce when to banish.
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I remember my character screen showing up in the negative in regards to both frost and fire resistance, when some alliance warlock cast it on me in Hillsbrad the other day.

Soo... maybe it doesn't work, but it's probably supposed to.

[Lissa]

Have the tooltips changed then?&nbsp; http://www.thottbot.com/index.cgi?k=804&nbsp; Says fire and frost there.

Edit: Or is this another case of a skill not actually doing what the tooltip says?
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It's a bugged skill. CoE works for Fire, but not Frost...like so many Warlock powers, it don't work right go figure... :blink:

[Arethor]

It's a bugged skill.&nbsp; CoE works for Fire, but not Frost...like so many Warlock powers, it don't work right go figure...&nbsp; :blink:
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I guess this means I'll be using CoS from now on then as it helps with Arcane damage (or so i've been told) and will help with my shadowbolt crits