Leaving behind how amazing flying is (or isn't, it's all quite subjective) for the moment and getting back to the proper stuff, raiding!
For two weeks in a row now we have really struggled on Socrethar.
I thought we were beyond this to be honest, with multiple smooth kills with both this guild and the previous one.
But suddenly, it seems like a scramble to get the kill. Last week, we relied on our Monk healer's Touch of Death to finish him off with only 3 of us left alive.
I'm not exactly sure what is going wrong but I have an unusual hypothesis surrounding the ghosts... We are too focused on them so some are getting through!
I know, I know, that makes no sense.
It all relates to our positioning.
We start off nicely grouped around the boss and our 'Construct' tank puts down a line of green fire to the ghost portal.
This, I think, is our first mistake. I would really like two lines of fire for the ghosts, side by side (which he sometimes does anyway but not every time).
Moving on... the first Gifts come in and we adjust our positioning so nobody is taking extra damage. We are generally ok at this point, all the ghosts are dying quickly, but you can see the start of the issue.
The next set of Gifts come in and this is where it really starts to go wrong.
The focus on killing the ghosts is so high that people now start to spread away from the boss so they can still hit the ghosts but not be hit by the Gifts.
Now the ghosts start to spread out which both makes them harder to AoE down and moves them out of the slowing effect of the fire.
Without that fire, those ghosts move fast! Sometimes we can still clear a wave but sometimes we can't, maybe because the Dominator is up at the same time.
Once one ghost gets through it's a downward spiral as the fears can allow others through, and we head towards a wipe.
My frustration then rises because the leadership blame the wipe on ghosts getting through, fair enough, but they don't seem to understand why the ghosts escaped.
I assume they think that some people are just staying on the boss rather than switching to kill ghosts so they re-affirm the need for Ranged to make sure no ghosts escape.
The Ranged then try harder to kill the ghosts but, instead of helping, this just makes the problem worse as people spread further in an attempt to position themselves for the ghosts.
Tonight, I am going to suggest the 'ghostbuster' approach.
This will be a massive shock to the leadership convinced we need more damage on the ghosts if I can prove to them that it only needs 2-3 people assigned, if everyone else can get the positioning right.
Wish me luck!
We prison our ghosts, focus on socrethar, go for two dominators/50% hp and let him back in, then clean up the ghosts as prisons expire. Is it clean? Sometimes :p Often we push it too far and end up with too many ghosts, or ghosts coming from two locations. But being conservative usually leads to a kill, even if I don't get to go crazy on ghosts.
ReplyDeleteWe also usually have 2 DKs that can use gorefiend's grasp to control ghosts if they start to get loose.
Good luck.
Using that tactic we might actually be able to kill it in one phase to be honest, we get it to around 20% at the moment.
DeleteI will pass it on to our RL.
It seems like a risky strategy though, one misplaced prison and ghosts would be everywhere! Is it easy to keep the prisons going?
We actually skipped straight to Mannoroth last night for some (many) progress wipes, RL is trying to mix up when we do progress and when we do farm to keep things fresh.