Lend me your vast knowledge base re: Nightbane.

Hi guys n' gals,

Thank you in advance for reading this and lending me your expertise.

My Team has Kara down to a 6 hr farm time (in which I main tank, and sub my Enh Shaman for Illhoof letting the feral druid OT take both Illhoof and Kilrek)

However, we are still not able to finish nightbane. We seem to have an issue during his air phases with the skeletons. I've read all kinds of different strategies, but I'm somewhat retarded as I can't seem to understand what all is happening. My problem is I dont know what his abilities actually look like... and I get contridicting advise from guildies who have done this fight before elsewhere or on a different toon. Group up/Spread out etc.

So my question for the masses is this, how best to handle the Air phases if your RAID consists of the following:

1 Prot Warrior
1 Feral Druid
3 Mages
1 Holy/Disc Priest
1 Holy Pally
1 Resto Druid
1 Rogue
1 Warlock (swaps with hunter occasionally)

We wiped 9 times last night before giving up, our best attempt was 25%... we just skirted by with each air phase prior, and used 2 Breses.

And on a side note, how do you avoid the fear if there are 2 scortched earths up, side by side at the 40 yard range?

Thanks again in advance for any advice / help you might have.

Atank - Empíre
Detheroc

The key to the air phase is to quickly take out the skeletons so you have enough time to allow the tanks to get back into position and the raid to set back up. Group up when he takes off, go nuts trying to grab aggro on every target, druid does the same. AOE the crap out of em, have the mages coordinate a rotation of frost novas to hold them in place.

With 3 healers including a resto druid, the fear shouldn't be an issue. They need to keep the tank topped up and the druid needs to keep up all his HoTs...should be more than enough to carry the tank through a fear. If the tank misses a fear and a DPSer has outranged it, all hell breaks loose.

2 of the 3 air phases you should have AOE taunts up....use them if you need to. Thunderclap like crazy, demo shout, tab taunt....have the druid spam swipe and taunt. The key is to burn them down fast. With that much AOE I would think that's your best bet. With one group I run with we are very melee heavy and we assist train them down. In the other ...meh we have enormous DPS so we just kill em somehow.

Some tips.

Make a macro that does /target nightbane.

The first time he lands, he'll land near a skull. So put an imp near there for your health.

At about 5 seconds before he lands each time, target him with the macro and look for the red targetting circle and run and put your back against the outside wall/battlements after grabbing him.

If you're a warrior, he's very easy to stance dance through the fears. No need for a fear ward on you. Put it on a healer if need be.

-- gyre --

Thanks for your responses guys.

As for tanking Nightbane, there's no problem. I know of the skull on the ground, I always Bloodrage / shield slam immediately for aggro, and the healers have stopped healing 5 seconds before he lands. My biggest problem are those skeles. I guess we'll just use our challanging shout, bear shout, then frost nova's combined with an AOE next time to take them down, rather than trying to single target them.

But what about the rain of bones? Do we group up and stand in it? spread out? Group up, then move aside? Move as one, or spread out after skeles spawn? That's what I really can't figure out. And that Red/Black fireball he does, is that his Smouldering Breath? Do we just heal the pewp out of the person targeted with that?

Like I said, we got him to 25% the last time, so I'm sure we're just a tiny bit away from finishing the fight, I appreciate your help, helping me to just understand the fight from your experience. ;)

-Atank

A common mistake is not dispelling the debuffs he casts on the group. Also last i heard a holy paladin with righteous fury takes rain of bones.

The skeletons i cant help you with, im a paladin tank those are my job ;)

in the air phases,the raid should stand together, so the skeletons spawn close to each other and the dds. then just let the feral dud be main assist, so every dd is focusing the same (druids) target. While they are killing the skelets, you are spamming tc and try to bring up 1 or 2 sa and ss and rev on some mobs so you have a little aggro. You dont need to tank them, but just go sure that they are not attacking healers. usually, we have them all killed 10-15 sec before nightbane is landing.

We've never worried about skeletons dying before Nightbane lands. Generally we would have two tanks in a raid (one prot one feral / dps warrior) and they'll focus on gathering the skeletons and ensuring none are hitting a healer. DPS assist trains them down, with the understanding that they're not going to get any heals and they need to stay alive, so be careful on aggro. With 15 second to go in the air phase, the MT tank, and a hunter if we have one, peel off to get Nightbane...and sometimes the tank has a pair of skeletons beating on them that get ranged down.

Our healers are under instructions to just focus on each other and let the highest ac healer (pally for your group) do a bit of initial raid healing when the rain of bones happens. It worked pretty well while learning, with only the occasional battle rez needed on a dumb dps'er.

1) You have plenty of healing, so have the paladin put on some +dmg (~200) gear and ALL PLATE.

2) When Nightbane leaves the ground everyone should gather up.

3) Paladin will put up Righteous Fury and drop a Consecrate.

4) When it starts raining have all the clothies GTFO.

5) The paladin should continue to Consecrate and heal him/herself to hold all the skeletons, while the druid picks a target and the DPS assist trains the druid. You just worry about loose adds.

6) Profit.

I normally have my ot (fury warrior) with a symbol, when he lifts off, we all stack on him, (normally he runs to my location i just hate having a symbol on me), and we single target kill everything. IF you get the debuff, GET THE HELL OUT OF THE GROUP. The only people who can survive it through heals are tanks, so dispel any non-tanks that grab it, single target kill the things, and you should have at least 10 seconds to resposition, if you have a hunter, have him misdirect to you. My issue has never been the skels, its always when he lands, i can't get the agro right off the bat and the hunter saves me .

Thank you all for your recommendations and assistance.

I look forward to implementing these suggestions on Sunday when we do this fight again next and upgrading my Adamantite Breastplate to nightbanes, or my Ambassidor Hellmaw shield to nightbanes ;)

Much appreciated!

Atank - Empíre
Detheroc

Adamantite Breastplate!

Of all the tanking chests available, you haven't gotten any of them?!?

[item]Breastplate of the Warbringer[/item] is great and easy to get.

Quest line starts here: http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?wquest=9991

Ends here: http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/quest.h...e;wquest=10011

Good luck getting the Nightbane chest. Remember, the stuff you want only drops when you aren't there. ;)

LOL signu i was saying the exact same thing =x

If you're aldor grab the vindicator's hauberk too.

for shields you could've had coldarra or crest of sha'tar! :X

Oh I have a "Tank" Chest... notably the Jade-skull breastplate from Mech, AND the Warbringer......

However, the 3 +12 Stam gems I have in my Adamantite chest plus the innate stam make it a better STAM chest over all, which is what I was looking for for nightbane... since I already have 510 Def as is, with Adamantite equipped (and flasked).

^_^

Atank - Empíre
Detheroc

We do what everyone here is say pretty much also. When I go w/ my warrior (DPS) I am the MA for the Skelies. We all gather on the MT, spread out when Rain of Bones starts hitting and single target burn them down. For myself once I see the Rain starting I will rush out pop bloodrage or imp zerker rage, tab target a skele, intercept back in and pop WW for inital agro from hits on the group. Pop DS, and cleave, WW as able to work them down.

Depending on the rest of the DPS make up we can have all the skeletons down w/ plenty of time for eveyone to get reset for when nightbane lands.