Reply With QuoteEvery attempt I've done it at least one or two of the melee get it while melee'ing him and not moving from his spot.Originally Posted by Quinafoi
Why does everyone always say this wrong. Granted bubbles on everyone is in general a good idea, but melee should never have a Blood Nova.
A discipline priest's bubbling priorities should be...
1. Mark of the Fallen Champion (ticks faster than Boiling Blood, therefore higher priority)
2. Boiling Blood (ticks slowly)
3. Ranged DPS (eligible targets of Blood Nova)
4. Melee DPS (could possably be hit by a Blood Beast when spawns or could be picked for a future Boiling Blood)
5. Tanks (always take damage)
Every attempt I've done it at least one or two of the melee get it while melee'ing him and not moving from his spot.
Then you are doing it wrong and have too few targets at range.
Several causes for this.
1. You are mistaken and the damage caused is Boiling Blood and not Blood Nova. I've had several people tell me that melee was being hit by it, but not even knowing which mechanic they are being hit by.
2. There is someone near the melee but not in melee range, i.e. a healer standing just outside of melee range not stacking properly with the melee. This is very easy to detect because you won't see the tanks take any damage from Blood Nova. If you were in position correctly, any Blood Nova on the melee DPS would also hit the tanks, his hitbox isn't large enough for this not to occur. I have seen combat log parses where the tanks are not hit by Blood Nova but melee DPS is and it is because of someone not standing in melee who should be.
3. You have too few targets at range and because there were insufficient valid targets for the ability, anyone becomes a valid target (i.e. too few people at range on General and he could cast Shadow Crash on the melee). For 25 man the requirement appears to be 10 people at range. For 10 man the requirement appears to be either 3 or 4 (I think it is 4).
It's relatively clear the mechanic heavily favors ranged targets. Our first 25 man kill we had 9 ranged targets, and 2 out of 19 Blood Nova's hit melee. Guess a number between 1 and 3. Do this 19 times, and only guess wrong twice. That's about the same odds.
While it is still uncofirmed, I believe Blood Nova from a 25 man standpoint requires 10 targets at range in order to prevent Blood Nova from ever hitting the melee, and the actual true Blood Nova mechanic is that it picks one of the furthest 10 targets. You "/roll" twenty times, you'd guess that you would get numbers less than or equal to ten twice, the rest of the time it was 11-100. Suddenly the odds of hitting two targets in melee makes a bit more sense because they had a 10% chance of being picked with 9 ranged targets. 9/10th chance for range, 1/10th chance for melee.
Granted I can't say definatively that he picks the 10 furthest targets, I haven't actually tested to that extreme. But it is a possible explaination as to why even with fewer than 10 targets at range he rarely picks melee.
Last edited by Quinafoi; 01-05-2010 at 01:19 AM.
This fight is primarily about managing Blood Power. Your raid DPS is more than enough, your add control sounds fine. You just need to reduce the BP gain from the other sources.
Bring the Disc Priest. It really is that important for this fight:
OK. So we took our first look at Saurfang 25 man this week, after taking it easy for a while through the holidays. We watched the movies and read the strats and prepared ourselves. We were making solid progress with the pally healing agro to kite mobs routine, but people were all over the place and DPS was way too thin to get the boss down. So we said screw it, when all else fails tank and spank it.
Set up:
3 tanks - 2 pallies, 1 bear (maul glyphed)
7 - 8 healers
DPS fills in remaining.
Strat:
Tanks grab agro on the bloodbeasts while DPS burns them down. We still rotate Saurfang between two tanks to avoid excessive healing but don't bother with frost traps or any of that junk. All DPS burns down the bloodbeasts as soon as they spawn. Tanks get as much agro as they can and tank up as many of the bloodbeasts as possible. The raid focuses down the bloodbeasts and then burns back on Saurfang. We got the first Mark at 60% and just let the player die. We continued on doing that and got a solid pretty easy kill on first attempt tanking the adds. We recorded the kill and will get it up on Youtube in the next day or two.
Aziel
Dark Crucible
Dragonblight
Last edited by Kaddish; 01-08-2010 at 12:00 AM.
We got him down last night on 10man, and we actually did not have either a hunter or shaman for most of the night. We ended up having a boomkin on one side, and myself(mage) on the other. We tried out having me in a deep frost build, and when both beasts spawned, boomkin would root the left, and I'd wail on the right. If all went well, which it usually did, the massive slowing of frost kept the right beast coming to me at a snail's pace, we burned it down, and the druid kept the left beast rooted until I switched and we repeated on beast #2.
It worked out quite nicely, and later on we had a hunter come in, adding a misdirect to me, forcing the beast to slowly crawl all the way across the balcony while we burned it down.
Our shaman didn't show up, so we didn't have heroism, but we eventually got him down without it. Having it, however, we likely would have downed him several attempts earlier, as the last few we had Saurfang down to 5, 1, and even half a percent before he healed and wiped.
If you have the option to, try out a frost mage on this fight. Focus on single target slowing and damage talents, as the beasts are highly resistant to, and harder to control, in aoe. It worked well, and definitely a viable method for containing the blood beasts.
Happy Hunting!
Waterjug
Eulogy
Ravencrest
our strat for 25 man involved a buddie system for dealing with the adds. linked pairs of ranged could easily burn the adds before they even had to move much as long as one had a reliable slowing ability or there was enough trap coverage in that quadrant. Our last kill we only had 1 hunter and 1 enh shaman for AOE slows but we were able to put either a mage or a Spriest in each pair to slow the adds. We were actualy short on ranged and so one of our druid healers (myself) taunted the spair and rooted it once it was out of melee range, ranged would pounce on it once their target was delt with. The adds spawn at the points of a 5 pointed star with the top point directly in front of the boss. if your tanks keep the boss faceing the same direction it is trivial to assign a specific point to each pair.
Ranged were told to keep away from everybody if possible but if not only stack with their buddie. Our rets were told to watch their divine storms for the few seconds around the spawn, once some other damage happend to them it wouldnt matter if DS hit even if the mobs were still in range.
We did let the first 2 marks die, 1 landed on a healer and another on one of our OT's that was DPS for the fight. the third mark which landed at 30% we DI'd the mark and BR'd the pallie to block blood gain, his fourth mark landed just before the kill and we simpily healed through it. we basicly had 4 people that were designated critical due to a specific role in the fight that would be saved through mark but anybody else was going to watch the rest of the fight from the floor. Of note the guy we DI'd did not get the achievement but was still eligable for loot.
Leting 1 or two marks die simplifies the encounter a bit stretching out the time you have to kill him. if you plan to let someone die let them die fast, if you heal him for 30s and then let him die he just half filled the energy bar and all you did was heal the boss. you also dont want to let more than 3 die or you risk hiting his enrage as if you are choosing this approach you are already probably a bit light on DPS or you'd go for a strait burn and heal.
for 10 man we generaly assign 2 ranged to kill and 1 other raid member to controll the second add till the first one dies. When I run often this is me rooting the add as it comes out for me due to heal agro. we have also sucessfuly used shamans frost shock kiteing as well as your standard mage/hunter kiters. if people keep their distance and you dont allow the beasts to hit you can kill him right around the time of the first mark if your tanks swap accurately. Tonights run he died at 97 energy and no mark thanks to high DPS and a flawless exicution.
Last edited by merendel; 01-13-2010 at 12:36 AM.
How many ranged dps do u use to kill the adds my guild is currently using 5 grps of 2 ppl each but we cant get past 20% and we often get 6-7 marks during the course of the fight can u shed some light on how many ranged u have on adds and possibly what we are doing wrong?
2-3 per add, depending on class and dps.Dont forget to attack that one behind the boss. Nobody should be hit by adds, absolutely nobody, Use frosttrap whatever, move but dont get hit by´em and ensure that everybody goes back to his or her position in order to avoid blood nova. There are mostly two reasons for the fast Runepower build up.
1.People get hit by adds.
2. People are to close to each other
I recommend 4 to a absolute maximum of 6 Healers,2 Tanks, and dps. Let Marks die, if you heal em the whole fight you will probably not be able to kill the boss. If Boss is at 30% just heal marks and use heroism right after biests are down. Let marks till 30%of Boss DIE and if you are dealing average dps, you´re gonna get the first mark @ 60%
Stuns are your friends. If you have insufficient ranged to allocate to all the targets, put melee on them. Stunned Blood Beasts don't hit, therefore they generate no Blood Power. We actually have melee take care of the back two adds while ranged only kills the one behind the tanks and the two off to either side of the tank.
Also Shadowfury works great. Stun them everytime when they first spawn... then none of your melee ever has to worry about AoE in their rotation. Honestly, a Divine Storm that happened to hit one of the adds with significant AoE reduction isn't going to hold aggro off of a 15k ranged crit that has time to be cast because the adds were stunned.
You need about 10k DPS per add that is running out to kill it in 10 seconds which is usually enough to eliminate the need to kite at all, it dies before it gets to you if slowed or knocked back along the way. For the adds being killed by melee, assign more DPS to it so they die faster. You get a 3 second stun out of Shadowfury, then maybe a Hammer of Justice or something. You have to kill them before the stuns wear off, but 20k DPS will kill them in 5 seconds.
There is a lot of information about this already in the prior posts in this topic.
Last edited by Quinafoi; 01-13-2010 at 01:47 PM.
A different POV, maybe it has already been covered here but unfortunately i havent been following hte thread closely, just decided to stand in and tell how we do it(havent seen this on any kill vides yet).
On 10 man he is simple, we have a hollypally and a tree heal, the rest dps - havent seen a single mark in 3 or 4 weeks now. 3 ranged take care of the adds. If you can choose your healer setup, disc priest is your friend(has been said before here, i know)
Now on 25 man is where our strat is a bit...different. We were having major problems our first kill(server lag was one of them) so when we came back i decided to adjust some things.
We bring no less then 8 ranged dps to the fight, only 4 healers(usually 2 hollypallies 1 restodurid and 1 disc priest) 2 tanks and the rest melee. You must have 2 ret pallies in your raid for this to work.
Start the pull as normal, burning heroism on pull while every dps is still on the boss. Pallies heal with their r.fury up, drawing all the adds to them pretty much as soon as they spawn. If we have wars tanking, they shockwave as soon as the adds appear to give ranged more time to get aggro. Then just burn them as they are going through the ice traps, typhoon them back if needed.
If the disc priest is doing his job just right then Saurfang should be at no more then 50-55% when he casts the first mark. As he is ready to cast it, he selects a target for it and the first assigned ret pally targets that player, waits for the cast to finish(and gets in range if needed) and casts Divine Intervention as soon as the player gains the mark.The person with DE just stands out for the rest of the fight, the pally gets BRed back.
The reason why we decided to do this is because of the drastically increased speed of Saurfang getting the 2nd mark when the first is already dealing damage and giving him bp.
If everything went well, continue to dps him like normally, and yoiu should be getting a second mark just before he dies. You can choose either to use the second DI on it or just heal through(with beacons of light fe) till the boss is down.
So far the only problem we have seen with this strat is a healer getting DI - so far happened to us once, and just as a coincidence we were running 5 healers that week, so we managed.
I dont know if this is usefull to anyone out there, but we had some good reasoning behind starting to use this strat. The night after the reset ss when we uasually raid ICC and on our server it is a lagfest every week. We cant move the raid(due to internal reasons) and therefore had to choose a way to prevent any PB gain possible since saurfang was already gaining to much due to laggy add kills or whatnot.
Razzoc of Kill Loot Repeat , Sylvanas EU
So i finally got my guild to follow direction's and we did the strat as seen on tankspot's video ty btw guys for the awesome video. In Short it was a 1 shot flawless victory no deaths 4 marks total we have 5 ranged total on the adds we had a boomkin channel typhoon as adds came out and drag them through hunter traps 2 hunters a lock and a mage all pulling about 9k each single targetted adds and burned them down 1 by 1. All and all the fight went very smoothly as i stated 4 marks 0 deaths we got unlucky the first for the first 2 marks they were on our tank healers the 3rd was on the mt easily healable and the 4th hit at 2% on a hunter. Thank You again for the insight guys the post's really helped me and my guild out and keep up the good work time now to study up on festergut cus he die's tomorrow.
Alright one thing i found out about this is that if u have a ret pally or holy pally have them DI one of the marks B4 3mins or so on enrage the pally who doesnt have the mark will not heal the boss and the marked person will not take any damage until DI wears off at which point enrage should hit and it wouldnt make a difference.
Just have the pally soulstoned or Brez'd.
Again this week we just tanked the adds. We even stopped using the bear tank. I am one of two pally tanks we use with Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous. We just throw our normal rotation with an eye on the timer for beasts. We make sure we have hammer of the righteous available when they spawn and we both hit it and throw avenger's shield as the bloodbeasts come out. Whichever pally is currently tanking the boss may also target and taunt an add. The DPS turns to the beasts and burns them down.
Even with the debuff to dodge, we avoid a lot of the attacks from the bloodbeasts. With this strat the boss will gain blood power at a faster rate. However, because ranged is not really moving around, and melee is not trying to lower splash damage his health also drops at a faster rate. We get our first mark around 60%, which is virtually the same spot we get the mark when kiting. This may seem to be no real advantage at first but consider 60% comes almost 1 minute earlier and you can see the advantage.
Additionally, I believe gear is less of a factor with this strat. The only reason we even attempted this strat is because we were hitting the enrage timer with 15 to 20 percent still to go. The first time we pulled this off we were short on raid spots so included 3 DPSers who normally would not be invited (one raider's mom, one hunter on his first 25 man raid, and one druid who was battling a serious lag/DC problem,) with 8 healers and 3 tanks.
I am not saying this strat is going to work for everyone. In fact, we were all a bit shocked it worked for us. I am saying if you seem to be hitting a wall try it. You might be surprised.
Additionally, all three of our 10 man groups use this strat and all groups get him in 2 marks or less.
Aziel
Dark Crucible
Dragonblight
The key concepts are the same but if you want to maximize DPS the goal is to kill the Blood Beasts before people have to move to avoid them. Movement kills DPS. The kiting technique will cause the kiter(s) to be severely nerfed in DPS.
There are two general schools of thought in this area.
One, tank the adds. The tanks have higher avoidance and threat generation than the DPS. While they are relatively gaurenteed to be hit sometimes causing Blood Power gains, killing the add fast enough reduces the number of attacks which connect.
Two, assigned targets. Allocate sufficient DPS to each of the beasts individually such that they are dead before they reach the person they are moving towards (the kiter, but doesn't actually kite). Often combined with this method is the melee stun locking and killing one or more of the adds while stuned. A stunned add does not attack therefore generates no blood power. Also since you generally have significantly more melee DPS to allocate per target, two stuns per target is generally more than enough.
With the Blood Beasts' drastic mitigation of AE damage, you don't really gain much damage by clustering them together for the ranged squad.
Coordinate your melee squad to explode one or two of the adds, utilizing stunlocks. Coordinate your ranged so that they pair/trio up to kill an assigned Blood Beast before it reaches them (damage, slows, pushbacks...whatever works for them). You'll eliminate the kiting, and you'll drastically reduce the BP gain. And that translates to faster kills with fewer Marks.
Oh, and bring Disc Priests.
We don't AE the bloodbeasts, sorry if I did not make that clear. We are not increasing our damage on the adds by having them clustered what we are doing is eliminating the time it takes to switch between adds and other repositioning. And maximizing the time we spend on the boss.
I mentioned earlier that we focus the adds down. The only difference in the system you are suggesting and what we do is that we eliminate all the kiting responsibilities, "slows, pushbacks...whatever works for them" (all those things are just modified kites. OK the mobs don't follow around like a kite, but the basic principle is still to maintain threat without getting hit.) Those things have a cost to the kiter. We eliminate all those costs by having the tanks grab threat on the adds. Even with a dodge debuff the tanks avoid a significant portion of the hits. Doing this allows the DPS to burst down the adds and get right back on the boss.
In the end, the proof is in the pudding, One Mark at 15% on 10 man and 4 marks on 25 man. Achievements for both. With Saurfang going down easy mode in 6 minutes on 25 man, I am not really all that concerned about working on a, "better strat".
Aziel
Dark Crucible
Dragonblight
Last edited by Kaddish; 01-19-2010 at 11:31 PM.
I was under the impression that the Blood Beasts had a very high resilience to AoE damage so unless everyone is single targeting them down and taking them out in less than 30 seconds, you are going to be giving Saurfang lots of Blood Power
The measure of a life is the measure of love and respect. So hard to earn, so easily burned - Neil Peart
I'm certain Blizz changed it so that power word shield does not prevent Saurfang from getting blood power. I have noticed when shielding myself when I have blood boil the little red balls still go towards Saurfang. I don't know if this is just a visual thing that happens as part of the spell, or if it means he is actually getting blood power.
My group has the tanks tank the adds and we are much, much more successful with that strategy than with letting the adds run all over and have people wasting time casting CC and snares instead of damage. We still use rogues to stun them as much as we can, however.
The hardest part of this fight is dealing with his 30% enrage.
This fight is also somewhat luck based. If one of your healers gets the mark there's a billion times greater likelihood of a wipe than if a DPS gets it. As a priest I can use binding heal so it's not that bad, but when that 30% enrage hits it's almost impossible to keep anyone up, even myself, while still doing my job healing the tanks.
This is a graphical glitch. I've seen it as well however in the same video where I see blood flying from me to the boss, I also see him not gaining any Blood Power. Sometimes the graphics will still render the flow of blood even though it isn't actually doing its effect. I have noticed this glitch prior to the false change to the wowwiki article stating that Power Word: Shield did not work as well as after. Power Word: Shield does work if damage is fully absorbed (triggers combat event _MISSED instead of combat event _DAMAGE). Also according to the tooltip of his ability which if they were going to change his mechanic they would document that they have to change the tooltip as well, any of his abilities or beasts that cause damage result in blood power gained. If they do not cause damage, no power is gained.
As for add management there is three schools of thought. Kite them. DPS burn them. Or tank them and burn them while they are on tanks. The later two often involve stun locking, it's more a matter of does the tank care about it or is DPS alone responsible for it, if the add is stunned it doesn't matter who has aggro a tank or a DPS.
The encounter isn't particularly difficult to heal, it's possible to heal 25 man with as low as 4 healers, though typically you'd run with 5 or 6 to have the cushion allowing you to sacrifice a healer if need be.
Last edited by Quinafoi; 01-25-2010 at 11:59 AM.
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