Kara gets me Crushed

[Mudslinger]

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...g&n=Mudslinger

Our guild has been raiding Kara for a while now and Curator, being the gear check he is, seems to causing me (and as such the healers) trouble. Reviewing my logs for the combat I see I am still getting crushing hits for between 2500 and 5000 with minimal blocked. My def. is 508 (with appropriate rings and whatnot) and yet I am still getting those crushing hits.

I was under the impression that at 495 you should be immune to crushing hits. What's going on with that? Or has this number changed?

Thanks!

[Mestaae]

Greetings, Mudslinger.

The most basic reason is because defense skill is not the only thing required to push Crushing Blows off the combat table. 490 defense is the magic number required to push CRITICAL hits off the combat table. You need 102.4% avoidance with, or far more rarely without, either Holy Shield or Shield Block active.

If you are a druid then it is NEVER possible to become uncrushable. The only way for a druid to mitigate crushing blows is to have their armor and health as high as possible.

If you want to know more about becoming Uncrushable then do some searching around here and you'll scare up a TON of very good threads about just that.

Arguably, the definitive work on the topic is Uncrushable - By Satrina

Best of luck to you.

~Mestaae

[Nilya]

Keep Shield Block on cooldown at all times, and you should rarely see crushes.

[Bonerot]

Curator is more of a dps check then a tank check. He doesn't hit that hard at all. Just keep up demo shout, tclap and shield block and you can sit there all day.

The DPS however is who is really taxing your healers. The slower they are at killing flares the more damage they take. Make sure no more then one person is wearing arcane resist gear (the person taking the hateful bolts) and that your groups dps is over about 2300. Anything lower and even if your healers can last 10 minutes the boss will likely enrage.

The casters should be blowing pots here when you are learning this, it's very mana intensive for this point in your progression.

[Radhja]

Curator is notorious for being one of the "walls" of Karazhan, in that if you don't have the gear, you're not doing to get past him.

Mitigating his damage is comprably easy to some of the other bosses since the tank doesn't have to worry about positioning (he has no knockback abilities) and he's pretty much a tank n' spank fight from the tanks point of view. Thunder Clap and Demoralizing Shout will go miles for mitigating his damage. Just make sure you watch your Buffs for the Shield Block icon and spam it between your other attacks. High avoidance will also do wonders for you in this fight, since threat certainly won't be an issue (at least, not until evocation). Stack Dodge/Parry/Block as high as you can (being sure that you don't ignore your defense score), and your raid should walk away with some new T4 gloves... as long as the DPS is on their game.

What really makes Curator a headache when learning how to manage the fight is the short respawn timer on Curator's trash. You might get 3-4 good attempts in before having to reclear, so make each of them count and don't let people dawdle.

[Rayne]

They answered your crushing issue. Something we've done lately is pretty much gather round Curator's feet instead of being greatly spread out. It makes the fight tougher on the healers, but it's easily shaved 2-3 mins off our kills. We're clocking in consistently at 3 min kills now with that strategy.

I don't know if this is a bad idea for a guild struggling with Curator, but if your healers can handle it the flares become a lot easier which gets your DPS more time on Curator when he evocates. We consistently have him on enrage (or a few % away) upon his exiting Evocate these days.

[Rhorr]

My suggestion is to adress the fact that you are "new" to curator. This suggestion may not apply to more veteran players who have signicantly higher experience and gear.

I suggest that you have your ranged dps create a macro, /target astral
It doesnt have to be complete like /astral flare. Besides, if you misstype it, the macro wont work, so keep it short, IMO.

It has already been suggested to have one person with arcane resist gear, and that person MUST be 2nd on the aggro list. He will only do the hateful bolts on that person. I find that either one of our mages or shadow priest does quite well with that job.

The main killer is that the dps is not killing the flares fast enough, so the group ends up with multiple flares and devided dps=bad. Everyone should be taking down the flares, consistently, that is the sole task, until he evocates, and only then should everyone be dps'ing him. One other point to add here, there will always be one last flate appear just as he is about to evocate. You must get this last flare first, then proceed to dps him while he is (hopefully) still evocating.

2nd, if you have melee dps like warriors or rogues, have them hang back a a bit behind the tank. I find that this helps them to "see" the flares as they approach the group and the melee can straf left or right to get in a few shots as the flares pass. Our melee dps is high enough, that I'm sure that as the flares pass them, they get in 1-2k damage each. If the melee chase the flares, they never move too far from behind the tank, and let the casters finish off the flares.

If the group stays calm and just focuses on flares when its time for that, and makes sure that they pick up that last flare just as the Curator evocates, the group will still have a good 15 seconds left of the evocate when they can do significant damage in a short amount of time.

Hope this helps.

[Mudslinger]

Thanks for all the replies thus far. I found the Uncrushable guide very interesting and will be trying some of the advice (that I can use right now) tonight when we go into Kara for the first half.

We have had a problem in the past that people dont finish the flares off before they start DPS'ing Curator and that usually ends up in a wipe. Or people dont take them down fast enough and the fight takes so long the healers run out.

I will suggest to the group that we can try a closer all-around encounter with Curator and see how that goes. The only thing that would concern me would be the 'too near' (deadly boss mods) distance and the flares lightening zap. Is that the part where is was mentioned more 'healer intensive'? If we are in closer proximity to Curator and each other, more people will get zapped more often.

Currently we have an 1800 preist and 1550 holy pally & shammy (not sure of his + heals) So, it might be worth a good bash =]

Thanks again all, feel free to keep the suggestions coming!

[Unsurper]

Make a macro for casting (shield block, revenge, devastate), burn it hard, devastate is last just to insure you don't lose your sunders, remember as said before keep demo shout and thunder clap up as without exception......agree/ this is a dps fight, if ur group doesn't have the gear they most likely won't have him down before the first 10 mins when all hell breaks lose, the very position I happen to be in lol.

[Bigstik]

Since 2.3, there was some change made that makes the following macros trigger GCD-affected and non-GCD-affected abilities simultaneously:

/cast Shield Slam
/cast Shield Block

/cast Revenge
/cast Shield Block

/cast Devastate
/cast Shield Block

If you're a spammer like me, then the likelihood of setting off Shield Block every time it's up, as soon as it's up, becomes very high.

[Thiorn]

Hmm I may have to try that Bigstik. Im a slowpoke.... anything that helps me avoid a button push improves my tanking.

[Soupa]

Kinda off topic, but the question was answered effectivley. The simple answer is Shield Block. Keep it up more.

I'm sure it's been posted or mentioned in the past or a different thread, but it's worth noting.
Consistently, we use a Shadow priest with some AResist ( Trink and pants ) for the Bolt tank. This reason is multi faceted.

First, the SPriest can keep a more consistent spell rotation up on curator, as opposed to the flares who should be dead withint 7-9 secs, or less. 7-9 secs is hardly enough time for a SPriest to get a good spell rotation in.

Second, with the priest focusing on Curator, he/she is able to keep VT and VE up and use it's effects more consistently and more mana efficiently. When/if the Spriest catches up to the tank on threat, ( Should stay well below the tank but above all others (healers) allowing for Heavy Evocate damage) He/She can switch to MB or MF the flares to help get them down faster as well, thus allowing more DPS to hop back onto curator between flares.

This strat allows for this fight to be done with one healer ( pref. druid for mechanics of the rest of the instance, poisons and instant HoTs on Aran ), and he rarely hits his 2nd Evocate anymore. If he does, he's guaranteed toast.

Soupa

[fracguru]

Since 2.3, there was some change made that makes the following macros trigger GCD-affected and non-GCD-affected abilities simultaneously:

/cast Shield Slam
/cast Shield Block

/cast Revenge
/cast Shield Block

/cast Devastate
/cast Shield Block

If you're a spammer like me, then the likelihood of setting off Shield Block every time it's up, as soon as it's up, becomes very high.

I don't recommend these macros for trash. Boss fights where you have virtually infinite mana, yes.

Just wanted to mention it since you might otherwise replace your revenge, devastate, and shield slam buttons with these macros for all encounters.

[hvidgaard]

I agree with fracguru - those macros are generally a bad idea. What about bosses that doesn't crush? why waste that much rage on nothing when you could be putting out a fair amount more tps