We go back tonight to Socrethar having skipped him on our way to 9/13HC for the week.
It seems like an incredibly simple fight to me.
Phase 1 is straight-forward, mostly just tank and spank but with a couple of mechanics we have dealt with before (many times) like moving out of the group when targeted by the charge.
Rotating some people in to help soak abilities with the tank sounds very much like Blackhand so that shouldn't cause many issues either.
Phase 2 seems to be where the problems start...
The tank in the construct seems to have the hardest job with a few things to juggle. Their ability to use these abilities well can have a massive affect on the difficulty of the fight, and can even change the tactics.
Thank Elune that this isn't one of those random target mechanics like Amber-Shaper back in HoF, can you imagine how hard this would be if we all had to get used to the construct?
It's just the tank though, he's great and getting better all the time.
For the rest of us, it is all pretty easy going.
We have some spells to interrupt
We have some adds to kill
We have a big add to focus down
We have a big debuff to track and need to move out of the group if it's on us
This is all pretty standard stuff.
We have great dps so the big add dies quickly
Excellent rotation of interrupts
Shamans and Boomkins to AoE down the other adds
An extremely vocal RL who shouts at anyone slow to move with the debuff
So why have we had so many problems on this boss?
Two weeks ago, before I was in the guild, they wiped many times and failed to get the kill.
Last week, they dropped to a 15-man team after only a couple of wipes to get the kill late on in the raid night.
This week, more wipes.
There seems like a psychological block with this boss, people believing it is too hard with a full raid group and being defeated even before the pull.
It might or might not be more difficult, I neither know nor care, because these are all mechanics we have dealt with a thousand times before.
I think people just need to remember how simple this fight really is.
I read this and think I know it sounds simple but what am I doing wrong? Maybe it will suddenly click into place on Monday after a bash at normal. I am glad to see you are settling into the new guild nicely - I'll be reading to see if I can learn something clever to improve my raiding so I'm glad you are posting more frequently!
ReplyDeleteJust as a guess from your post, I would say there is too much damage coming from the Shadowcallers staying alive too long and not being interrupted. They really spread the raid damage around and also make it less predictable.
DeleteA couple of positioning tweaks really helped us...
We had 2 ranged as 'Ghostbusters' and left them a space between the boss and the line of fire. This meant they could stay there if they got the Gift debuff.
They were an Ele Shaman (not me) and a Warlock and they just called for some help if needed which wasn't very often.
We split the raid up around the boss...
Tank at North
Ghostbusters at E
Ranged/Heals at S
Melee at W (Gift ppl further West)
...so if we took a couple of ticks from the Gift before people moved, it didn't hit the whole raid.
But we were still close enough for the ghosts to stay in the fire (any strays were knocked back in by the Ele Shaman)
With the ghosts taken care of, the rest of us could get the Shadowcallers down really quickly with a few more interrupts on them to reduce the raid damage.
Our Bear specced into Feline Swiftness as the speed boost carries over to the construct, he said it really helped. Not sure if your construct tank has a similar option though.
He only used the prison on the ghosts if there was no fire.
Hope this helps, good luck on Monday!
p.s. I've been trying to post more often, glad you like it :-)
p.p.s. Yes, I posted here instead of on your blog post as a shameless attempt to increase my comments ;-)
You know, if you REPLIED all my comments on your blog your comments would increase :D Now I must go back and check if my old comments got replies! Thanks for those tips, will try them out on Monday.
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