Ciderhelm
09-02-2008, 05:07 AM
We spent a lot of time delving into the complex mechanics of this encounter and it has allowed us to to turn what many top guilds claim is a 15-45 minute encounter into an 8-minute cakewalk.
Players dedicated to Yakhmar (Not Including Adds)
1 Guardian with high Crushing invulnerability or Heroic Defense or 2-3 Guardians with blue gear alternating aggro through Goad and Intervene.
1-2 healing classes.
Assassins, Barbarians, Conquerors dedicated to melee DPS. More is better, but even if you only have 1 or 2, you can do this encounter.
Positioning for Yakhmar Players
The tank, healer, and melee DPS all stand directly in front of Yakhmar. They stay here the entire time and only move away from his conal attacks if there is an extreme health drop due to Yakhmar's secondary attack.
Shouldn't DPS be in the back where they don't take conal damage?
No. This is what most guilds don't understand -- Yakhmar uses a Hate reduction ability on players directly in front of the him. If only the tank is getting hit by it, Yakhmar will inevitably freak out and kill all of your DPS'ers and healers unless you're willing to take an extraordinarily long time to kill him. Guilds that don't understand this single mechanic are the ones claiming Yakhmar needs to be a 15+ minute kill.
This mechanic is also the reason that you don't use ranged DPS on Yakhmar. All of the melee who are attacking Yakhmar have extremely low Hate throughout the encounter, and even a few mistaken hits from a Ranger jumping in late can start the downward spiral that leads to a wipe.
Notes for Yakhmar Players
Do not ever use fire damage. Iceworm Lullaby is an AOE ability that Yakhmar will do when he is struck by fire damage; Lullabies cause wipes.
People have posted strategies that suggest Lullaby is inevitable and fire damage has nothing to do with it. They are wrong. All of our kills are Lullaby free because we know how to control the damage.
Wath out for weapon enchants, HOX auras, Fire Stance, and any other potential sources of fire damage. If you're still seeing lullabies, use /logcombat on and do a search (CTRL+F) for "fire" in the text log in your AOC directory to find out who is causing it.
Yakhmar has a brief secondary attack. This is not the same as losing aggro, and it should never kill your melee DPS. It can, however, reduce their health far enough that they should briefly step out of the conal damage.
Speculation only: I have used Intervene every time the cooldown is up for the 1-minute aggro list buff. There's no harm in doing it in this encounter, and the premise is that it may have a chance of building my own Hate level every time time the secondary attack occurs. This may or may not be true.
If you use our strategy, do not let your Yakhmar group use AOE attacks when adds spawn. Keep him positioned in such a way that adds do not run through the Yakhmar group. The easiest way to do this is to keep his face turned 90 degrees in either direction of where he starts before the encounter.
Players dedicated to Adds
Everyone who's not on Yakhmar. For us, this is usually 3/4ths of our raid.
Position for Adds
The group handling adds should be far enough away from Yakhmar that long-range classes such as Rangers can never accidentally hit Yakhmar. Secondarily, it can be nice to have them far enough away that they can recover tombstones in case of a wipe.
Handling Adds
First, make sure you've read up on how the aggro list works in this thread (http://www.eventideguild.com/f28/979-aggro-table-what-determines-add-behavior/). It will save you a lot of hassle.
Second, make sure that the person getting aggro is back with the group through the encounter, and that everyone holds off DPS fire on the adds until that player has at least hit them. Early CC is generally fine; early AOE is generally terrible.
Adds will always come every 45 seconds. Guardians tanking adds can easily call out when the next set of adds is incoming by using Strike and Guard on the first mob they can hit; since this has a 40 second cooldown, it gives a great measurement tool.
45 seconds is a long time, relatively speaking. Some add groups will have just 3 adds, others will have up to 6; make sure that when you are only getting 3, DPS is taking care of the adds at a more careful rate.
In our groups, we generally expect players to use crowd control first before they DPS. The adds are susceptible to fears, stuns, slows, and knockbacks. They also don't have a lot of life. If your tank does not have 50% or more Crushing damage reduction, crowd control is absolutely necessary.
Players dedicated to Yakhmar (Not Including Adds)
1 Guardian with high Crushing invulnerability or Heroic Defense or 2-3 Guardians with blue gear alternating aggro through Goad and Intervene.
1-2 healing classes.
Assassins, Barbarians, Conquerors dedicated to melee DPS. More is better, but even if you only have 1 or 2, you can do this encounter.
Positioning for Yakhmar Players
The tank, healer, and melee DPS all stand directly in front of Yakhmar. They stay here the entire time and only move away from his conal attacks if there is an extreme health drop due to Yakhmar's secondary attack.
Shouldn't DPS be in the back where they don't take conal damage?
No. This is what most guilds don't understand -- Yakhmar uses a Hate reduction ability on players directly in front of the him. If only the tank is getting hit by it, Yakhmar will inevitably freak out and kill all of your DPS'ers and healers unless you're willing to take an extraordinarily long time to kill him. Guilds that don't understand this single mechanic are the ones claiming Yakhmar needs to be a 15+ minute kill.
This mechanic is also the reason that you don't use ranged DPS on Yakhmar. All of the melee who are attacking Yakhmar have extremely low Hate throughout the encounter, and even a few mistaken hits from a Ranger jumping in late can start the downward spiral that leads to a wipe.
Notes for Yakhmar Players
Do not ever use fire damage. Iceworm Lullaby is an AOE ability that Yakhmar will do when he is struck by fire damage; Lullabies cause wipes.
People have posted strategies that suggest Lullaby is inevitable and fire damage has nothing to do with it. They are wrong. All of our kills are Lullaby free because we know how to control the damage.
Wath out for weapon enchants, HOX auras, Fire Stance, and any other potential sources of fire damage. If you're still seeing lullabies, use /logcombat on and do a search (CTRL+F) for "fire" in the text log in your AOC directory to find out who is causing it.
Yakhmar has a brief secondary attack. This is not the same as losing aggro, and it should never kill your melee DPS. It can, however, reduce their health far enough that they should briefly step out of the conal damage.
Speculation only: I have used Intervene every time the cooldown is up for the 1-minute aggro list buff. There's no harm in doing it in this encounter, and the premise is that it may have a chance of building my own Hate level every time time the secondary attack occurs. This may or may not be true.
If you use our strategy, do not let your Yakhmar group use AOE attacks when adds spawn. Keep him positioned in such a way that adds do not run through the Yakhmar group. The easiest way to do this is to keep his face turned 90 degrees in either direction of where he starts before the encounter.
Players dedicated to Adds
Everyone who's not on Yakhmar. For us, this is usually 3/4ths of our raid.
Position for Adds
The group handling adds should be far enough away from Yakhmar that long-range classes such as Rangers can never accidentally hit Yakhmar. Secondarily, it can be nice to have them far enough away that they can recover tombstones in case of a wipe.
Handling Adds
First, make sure you've read up on how the aggro list works in this thread (http://www.eventideguild.com/f28/979-aggro-table-what-determines-add-behavior/). It will save you a lot of hassle.
Second, make sure that the person getting aggro is back with the group through the encounter, and that everyone holds off DPS fire on the adds until that player has at least hit them. Early CC is generally fine; early AOE is generally terrible.
Adds will always come every 45 seconds. Guardians tanking adds can easily call out when the next set of adds is incoming by using Strike and Guard on the first mob they can hit; since this has a 40 second cooldown, it gives a great measurement tool.
45 seconds is a long time, relatively speaking. Some add groups will have just 3 adds, others will have up to 6; make sure that when you are only getting 3, DPS is taking care of the adds at a more careful rate.
In our groups, we generally expect players to use crowd control first before they DPS. The adds are susceptible to fears, stuns, slows, and knockbacks. They also don't have a lot of life. If your tank does not have 50% or more Crushing damage reduction, crowd control is absolutely necessary.