Help with Valithria

[kiseki]

My group needs serious help with the Valithria Dreamwalker fight. I raid lead for a ten man group of a small guild. Most of us are good about doing what needs to be done. We make the most of our limited time each week to raid - generally only two nights a week for two and a half or three hours at a time. We have the first two wings on farm, and we even one shot Putricide lately. We've finished the Vampire wing once, mostly due to time constraints. Since we know that we can do the Vampire wing, we use our learning night for the Frost Dragon wing.

So far this is the one fight that we've been stuck on that I don't feel we are making very much progress at. I've read just about every strategy I can find online and have watched a dozen videos. I've done half a dozen different things with our DPS. The problem is that we are getting to within 30 seconds of the enrage timer and our best attempt is about 80%.

I have two healers go in the portals: (my moonkin goes tree) and a holy priest. Our discipline priest stays out. My two healers report getting stacks of Emerald Vigor in the mid to high twenties.

I'll list below what I have available to us - how would you organize this raid?

Core DPSers:
Me: Feral Druid, highest dps in the group. Been on Suppressor duty and tanking archmages. Bear tank offspec (rarely used).
Marksman Hunter: Second highest dps. Kites Blistering Zs.
Moonkin Druid: High dpser, but has been speccing resto for this fight.
Survival Hunter: Medium high dpser. Less experienced raider, but holds his own on fights that don't punish ranged.

Tanks:
Frost DK Tank: Generally off tanks, but takes main on certain fights. Well geared. Has been tanking Aboms in the middle of the room.
Prot Pally: Generally main tanks. Most experienced raider in the group, but slightly less geared. Has been switching to ret, but is willing to go holy if we need him to. His holy gear is decent, but probably has some gaps (trinkets, rings etc). As ret, he has been serving as a "firefighter" going where he thinks he is needed.

Healers:
Disc/Holy Priest: Tank healer. Has been staying outside and raid healing. Can switch to holy if needed.
Holy Priest: Has been going in portals and focusing on the dragon. No usable offspec for this fight.

Alternates (we usually have two of the following three with us):
Elemental Shaman: Still gearing up and learning.
Fury Warrior: Still gearing up and learning.
Shadow Priest: Mid to high DPS depending on the fight.



Anything anyone can think of to help is appreciated. I'd be willing to PM armory or wow-heroes info for our group if it is that important to know. I'm willing to try anything at this point. I expect that we'll be trying her again on Thursday. The only thing I can offer in return for a winning strategy is a public thank you, and my group's undying gratitude.

[Vong]

Sounds like it isn't your dps and it isn't your tanks so.........healers. This fight isn't a dps race or tank and spank it's all about the healers I'm afraid. You are only there to support them as they beat the enrage timer as nothing you can so can affect that apart from keeping them alive and not dying yourself and it sounds like you doing that bit fine. Holy pally would be ideal for this fight as very high single target heals with buffs is the only way to beat enrage timer. So forget the others it's your healers that are either not collecting enough orbs or arnt even with them capable of healing the 6 million in the time scale you have.
The only adds that affect the heals are the suppressor so as long as they are dying quickly then you need to look at how you healers are performing or swap em round a bit.
Good luck.

[IgnusFatus]

I know in my case on this fight I prefer to solo tank it on 10 man (Warrior). The only things that need tanking are the Aboms and Blistering's. The Mages melee like little girlsin 10 man so a dps can easily handle the hits. This keeps an extra spot free for you so you can have your prot/ret pally spec holy and have 3 healers for portals. If you still can't get it down with that setup, you'll need to figure out what your healers are doing.

Another thing, the Blistering Z's are more easily tanked than kited. Makes your ranged dps job easier and keeps more of them available for blazings/supressors. Also unclear on "suppressor duty". Assuming no blazings are alive, everyone should be killing any suppressors alive. Just my 2 cents.

[Rue]

My 10 man group just beat this for the first time a few days ago after 3-4 attempts. This fight is really all about the 2 healers you have focusing on Dreamwalker. They have to be 95% focused on healing the dragon and they have to be on top of stacking the buff from the dream.

A couple of things we did on our kill attempt which may help you:

We did use 2 tanks, 1 on each side (Frost DK / Prot War) but we both tanked towards the middle of the room when at all possible. I didn't break the DPS into two groups, we basically called out priority targets and the DPS moved to which ever side had the need. The only thing we really stressed was the Skele's. The rest was dying fast enough that it was rarely an issue.

It sounds like you're in effect losing 2 DPS (feral druid to "tanking" the archmages and the hunter to kiting the zombies.) As previously said, don't even worry about tanking the mages. Just kill them. As for the Z's, your tanks should be able to kite them effectively enough which allows for more DPS from your DPS'ers. Your frost DK in particular shouldn't have an issue as they can be slowed with Icy Chains.

Find out how much your dragon healers are helping with raid heals and if they're having to help too much you'll need to fix the issue so they can focus on the dragon. You may want to try having your disc priest go holy for this fight. We used a resto druid for raid heals and a holy priest(who is normally disc)/resto shammy on dragon heals.

We were having the same problem as you (@80% at the enrage) until our healers clicked and we used the rolling DPS vs two split groups and we crushed it no problem on our next attempt.

Good luck. We're on to Sindragosa tonight.

[MellvarTank]

That healing comp is really tough to heal through, I know geared healers that have issues on this fight getting her up in time. You have to manage the debuffs right, and hit the clouds in the right spot in the dream. NEVER let the stacks fall off. I know the druid is speccing resto, but if they don't have the gear to be doing it, you are shooting yourself in the foot. This is a healer fight, all the dps has to do is kill skeletons and interrupt frost bolts.

[Quinafoi]

This is a one tank fight first of all. The DK should go DPS and the Paladin (shield wearing tank) would typically be assigned to be the only tank since they will have considerably higher survivability against the worms that spawn out of the abominations. The abominations and the worms are the only things that require an actual tank. The casters can be handled by DPS and the zombies are kited by ranged.

Is your balance druid only resto for this particular encounter? If so, they should not be using a traditional healing spec but rather a spec designed for higher raw throughput. If the balance druid is in equivalent gear to the priest they should actually be able to outheal them even in balance gear if speced correctly in their off spec. Also, if you're actually approaching soft enrage where adds spawn faster and faster, this typically occurs around 7 minute mark and by that point your healers should be in the 40s for their stack of Emerald Vigor. If they are only in the twenties they can improve on that. With only two going you should be averaging at a bare minimum 5 stacks per portal phase. If you are falling apart much sooner than that then it is because your DPS isn't handling adds effectively enough. So either your healers aren't stacking the buff as fast as they should be or your DPS isn't able to keep up with the adds as long as they should.