[10-man] Freya + 3 Hard Mode Strategy

[Golruk]

After giving Freya+3 Hard mode on 10-man a few nights worth of attempts, we've found it rather difficult to manage all of the waves of adds successfully. I haven't been able to find a really good all-encompasing strategy description for this hard mode, so I figured I'd describe whats been happening for our attempts and see what ideas other people have to share.

We came up with a few possible reasons for our lack of success, but I am curious as to other people's thoughts on the encounter in general.

1. Coordination on the waves of adds. How explicit do you believe specific assignments need to be for dps, interrupts, killing trees, killing roots, etc. We found ourselves being able to handle the "mushroom" wave quite easily, so long as people made no major mistakes. However, for the 3 elementals and the lasher waves of adds we would consistently have people getting killed, inevitably leading to a wipe.

For lasher waves, how do you think it is best to handle ensuring that all of the lashers (or at least, a smaller amount) don't die and deal too much damage to the raid? Is there a positioning/method being used that is particularly useful? We've been trying grouping up on the boss, AEing the adds down, and then when they get to around 20% or so stopping AE, spreading out, and single target dpsing them down. This did not work well at all, and we eventually tried a few other strategies, but nothing we came up with seemed to work.

For the elementals, I (the Freya tank) eventually tried taunting the water elemental and tanking him myself, keeping him interrupted/stunned, but we still were having issues. Anything in particular that helped out with this wave?

2. Healing - our attempts were all with 3 healers, one holy priest, one resto shaman, and one holy paladin. Any specific strategies to suggest for healing/healers? Any various class combinations that you think might improve our chances of success?

We ran with a Prot Warrior (myself) tanking Freya, a Frost DK tanking the adds as they spawn, 2 melee dps (Rogue + Ret Paladin), 3 ranged dps (elemental shaman + mage + warlock).

Thoughts/ideas would be appreciated!

[swelt]

Lasher Waves: watch the project marmot addendum video.
3 Stooges: whatever works for you. Freya tank taunting the ancient water spirit, offtank on the stormlasher, hunter kiting the snap lasher (OT getting initial agro on it to avoid accidents) is how we did it.

Healing - we chose to do it with 2 healers. They described it as stressful but managed. Having an extra DPS that you can, for example, assign to priority kills of strengthened iron roots, will help you stay on top of the waves.

[Tailsz]

**Disclaimer** tank spot videos are pretty awesome but we did not study them for this encounter. Was more of a wing it type of thing so I am sure some of these recommendations are not perfect or there are better ways to do things. We also had no long term root to help out with lasher packs. This is just a recap of how my 10 man team did it and my recommendations to our second 10 man group based off their makeup/our makeup directly from our guild forums.. just figured i would give perspective from what we ran with. **Disclaimer**

So last night we did Freya's hard mode. I highly recommend G2 work on this for sunday after you guys get Thorim hard. It was a lot easier then I was expecting it to be. Here are notes for you all... I also will have a video of it (remembered to hit record!!) but probably wont be done (maybe) before sunday.

Group Comp

Tanks
Maxus

Notes: Maxus single tanked the whole time, the damage on him is anything but insignificant. Freya hits noticeably harder (15k+) and with 2 healers it definitely got us a few times. Bad things happen when healers eat that ancient conservitor debuff (lightning AoE) multiple times in a row with maxus tanking the conservitor (big tree dude, with mushrooms) & freya.

Recommendation: Definitely use 1 tank, I know you have vatalos and swipe definitely helps with lashers & with the strategy we use for the triples 2 tanks is not needed, and the extra DPS *definitely* is.

Ranged DPS:
Scrubz
Thescorpion
Zygong

Notes: Ranged for us had some of the most important roles in the encounter. They took care of the healing tree (eonars gift) and also the slows on the snaplasher (part of the triple pack)

Recommendation: If there is any way you can get a true root in for Freya's lasher packs (the little flowers) it would almost trivialize the entire thing. Ice nova is the one that springs to mind

Melee DPS:
Scrubzilla
Snarley
Imperious
Lemarque

Notes: Melee on this encounter really aren't that bad. The instant DPS for the add packs are helpful but we did have some RNG happen when Lemarque got rooted and then a sunbeam landed on top of him.

Recommendations: Again you guys have almost an identical setup to what we did, make sure your melee communicate when they get rooted (same for ranged)

Healers:
Ihealgood
Acceptance

Notes: Arguabley we had the best healing comp to two heal this that we could have, there is a ton of raid wide damage going on and HoTs + mending + coh = win. It is not easy by ANY stretch of imagination and the whole raid was constantly getting down to 10% or very close to death. If your DPS is incredible you might be able to 3 heal it but those lasher packs will be even more of a PITA.

Recommendations: Do everything you can to accommodate your healers, slow down DPS on those lashers and deal with the chaos that the next trash pack brings if it means your healers have some extra time to get people away from the death zone. Move away from your healer if they end up with the debuff on the conservitor packs. And most of all, ANY hybrid that has a healing spell (shadow priests and ele shaman were the two big ones for us) needs to be aware of the main healers getting booted out of range by the water spirits, throw out any heals you deem neccessary during lasher packs, and keep a watchful eye on the MT during conservitors. hybrids helping out eases the burden only a little bit, but it can make the difference between a kill and a wipe for sure.

Add's
If you get past her 6 Waves of adds, the enrage timer is not an issue.

Triples
Of all the packs, these are by far the easiest.

Snaplashers - Keep ranged on these guys to begin with, and keep Carize on it *full time*. Once the stacks are high enough the add becomes Immobilized and should no longer be threatening anyone thats not near it (and even if they are it should be agrod on your MT through taunts or Carize from ranged DPS). For the most part; unless we were behind on water spirit, ranged would end up killing the snaplasher outright without switching. We had an extra melee and ranged DPS (due to helping heals, DPSing Eonars gift, etc) was slower then melee.

Stormlashers - Melee started out on these, we got them to about 30% and then went after the water spirit. Straight forward, they dont hit very hard at all and the damage output to just about anyone is negligable

Water Spirit - this guy puts some RNG into the mix but ultimately he doesnt hit very hard either. The one problem it creates is when it charges one of your two healers and puts them out of range on the main tank

Notes: These adds spawn relatively close to freya and when they initially spawn they can agro onto the closest target. There was a few attempts where they gibbed iheal, myself, and almost others the split second they become active. Until Snaplasher is picked up and agrod by range, be careful but dont be slow either.

Lasher's(The small flowers)
By far the toughest pack and the one that causes the most grief.

The whole raid needs to converge on the main tank (freya). Once this happens AoE needs to be top notch until the adds are around 20-25%. After that happens, you NEED to spread out and you need to be single targeting the adds in accordance with raid health (dont gib adds until your healers are caught up). The adds themselves can sometimes gib people if they all target that person. Your 2 healers are *really* stressed at this point trying to heal the raid and the MT. If you make it through both rounds of these little guys, you should be able to finish the job. Last thing is that if you lose 1 person or you find yourselves a *little* behind with the next add pack being a big tree dude, just take it easy and finish the lashers, Brez the dead and then you can definitely catch back up on the tree dude.

Ancient Conservitor (big tree dude)
Another very easy add pack but not quite as easy as triples.

Make sure the MT picks this guy up because he can most definitely gib people. Concentrate on watching your debuffs here. If your healers get it dont make them move, get the raid to move from them. DPS time is not the issue with this add, and forcing healers to move any more then absolutely neccessary spells tank death here. Strengthened roots + debuff can also be a bad combination so be aware of the RNG factor if it happens..

Final Notes

Strengthened Roots
Make sure those that get the strengthened roots say so on vent ( /tar strengthened roots ), they will receive a skull but this is not enough and the roots need to be immediately broken.

Eonar's GIft
Another critical part of the encounter, 1 ranged DPS on this (they need to be 100% on top of it without being reminded) is more then enough to kill it before it heals anything. Make sure to communicate where it is, or where its spawning.

Ground Tremor
Focus targets help immensely on this encounter. Have your healers /focus Freya or make sure they are *very* mindful of the DBM warnings. Calling it out when you can helps to. If your healers eat the AoE freya does it has the exact same effect as ignis's flame jets. it locks out that school of magic for x amount of time. It can definitely wipe you.

Sun Beams
GTFO, do not stand him them, do not let Freya stand in them, they are bad.

Wave 5-->6
Remember that during this transition you have all the time you need to finish wave number 6 because the enrage timer is NOT an issue and you have no more trash packs incoming. So when you make it this far, take it easy and use the time you have to make sure raid health is good. Seeds are still a good bit off once the 6th trash pack spawns so be aware of them but not worried about it until it happens.

Seeds
keep the raid tight here so that seeds arent all over the place, it makes getting away from them easier. 3 times in a row i ended up being rooted in the middle of the seeds while everyone else was running away. the only reason i survived the first time this happend was from survival instincts + Barkskin(yes, i can last stand and shield wall in cat form... feral druids are OP). It can definitely kill you so communicate that you are rooted and ranged needs to get you out.

Communication Communication Communication make sure there is a constant flow of communication from everyone that can contribute. Dont crowd vent but if you dont say you have roots, it can easily kill you. If you dont say you cant move because you have a debuff and youre rooted, you can kill the raid.. etc etc etc

All said and done, it took us about an hour and a half to do this... much less then we expected, the attempts started disasterously with the first 5 not even getting us past the first wave of adds. By the end we were getting really good with converging for lasher packs and estimating when and when not to kill them. The final attempt we actually managed to be ahead on one of the lasher packs and had some time before the next trash pack spawned. Big tree dudes and triples we were almost always 3-10 seconds ahead depending on Raid Health/RNG.

[Kaidman]

Best method on 10man for the lasher packs we found was to bunch up. Drop a hunter trap in middle of the pack. At 20% everyone spread, at the same time I AE Taunt, ranged turns around and blows them all up on top of me (AEs). This requires 2-3 people who have good ranged AE. If they don't die at me before ae taunt fades then single target the extras down. Occassionally AE taunt won't be back up by the second lasher pack, we just AE to 20% then spread and single target them down.

[swelt]

Best method on 10man for the lasher packs we found was to bunch up. Drop a hunter trap in middle of the pack. At 20% everyone spread, at the same time I AE Taunt, ranged turns around and blows them all up on top of me (AEs). This requires 2-3 people who have good ranged AE. If they don't die at me before ae taunt fades then single target the extras down. Occassionally AE taunt won't be back up by the second lasher pack, we just AE to 20% then spread and single target them down.

Lasher Waves: watch the project marmot addendum video.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBKctmDQeR8]YouTube - TankSpot's Guide to Freya (Detonating Lashers Addendum)[/ame]