Blackwing Descent - Nefarian questions + idea

[Yagamoth]

Hi there, I've got a couple of questions:

In Phase 2:
- Is there a limit to how low you can drop Nefarian before killing the last add? (Encounter-wise)

My idea was to simply create a 4 healer Team to trivialize this encounter. Simply make the following "island" teams
- Healer + Tank (Interrupts)
- Healer + Tank/Melee (Interrupts)
- Healer + Healer + DPS + DPS + DPS + DPS/Tank

With this setup, we should have no problems healing the incoming damage over an extended period of time. But as I asked - I don't know whether there are any raid encounter-specific restrictions to this.

[klausi]

In Phase 2:
- Is there a limit to how low you can drop Nefarian before killing the last add? (Encounter-wise)

Only the three minutes timer. Basically it's limited to your survival cooldowns, topping everyone on your pillar simply doesn't cute it. We had several wipes the other night due to our shaman or hunter eating like 3 shadowblasts each in a row + electrocute. Having a protpaladin, (disc)priest, unholydk - basically anything with a groupcooldown trivializes this phase by a lot.

I've seen very different strategies, going from bringing nef to beyond 70% in phase 1 and just rushing phase 2 over stacking group-cds for phase 2 and entering phase 3 without touching the adds (besides melee/tanks interrupt duty) - forcing 2 or even 3 electrocutes. List goes on, there are a lot of viable options.

Other restrictions: you need either a third tank (feral kitty is enough), a kiter (preferable frost mage) or 5 undead cc for phase 1.

[Yagamoth]

Thank you for the information
--> Do the adds despawn after Phase 2 ends within the 3 minutes?

[Zarkos]

I didn't want to create another topic for this but Has anyone else noticed that the more latency you have (300 - 400 ms ish) the lava goes up way later than usual in phase 2? Usually I'm able to interrupt the first cast of the chromatic prototype by getting on top of the pillar without a problem (less than 100 ms), but yesterday I was having a little latency problem and I noticed the lava was still going half way through the pillar when the prototype started to cast the blast nova, when there is still no chance for me to reach the top, not even chance to get high enough to interrupt it while still in the lava.

Please notice that I understand that the cast itself it's more difficult to interrupt just because of the high latency, but that's not the point, the point is that with 400 ms I cannot even get close enough by the time he is the casting the blast nova. So.. has anyone else gone through that at all?

[Yagamoth]

It's probably "double dipping" with latency. The Lava goes up later than it should because it's client sided and you see the add cast later than it actually is because the cast is server side. (Sidenote: The Platform goes down, not the Lava up ^^)

-----

I've got another question: How do you handle the Skeleton adds? Is there an optimal strategy for them?

I've seen many kill videos, where Nefarian was simply brute-forced to 0% in P3. This nearly worked for us aswell. However, it would be much easier if the adds could be handled properly. (as in: as long as it takes)

First, my idea of handling the adds optimally:
1. In Phase 1, stack them all in one place
2. In Phase 3 they now should stand up at the same time because a single flame will refill their energy
3. Tank picks up all adds at once and slowly(backwards) kites them around to room (Not using any stuns, so they don't accidently stand in any flames that spawn)
4. After a while all of them should fall over in about the same spot
5. Repeat from 2

Is that even possible? Can anyone provide me a video where people used this strategy?

My question goes into the direction because: We don't have an offtank-possibility in Phase 1. We simply CC them where they stand if they are not in range of any breaths. Piling them up would cause us to lose a lot of damage to Nefarian.

Setup:
Prot Paladin
Tank DK
Resto Druid (Roots)
Heal Priest (Shackle)
Resto Shaman
Boomkin (Roots)
Warlock (Fear)
Hunter (Trap)
Rogue
Ele Shaman

[Anubee]

The adds will most likely not reset a second time, simply because nefarian's shadowblaze will be cast faster based on how long he's in P3, which reduces its cooldown to a mere 10s making resets on the adds unlikely/impossible.

[Yagamoth]

Well, as far as I know the Shadow Blaze makes a fire - but not instantly, you can pull the adds out of it. However the space gets more narrow as time passes, that's correct.

[Lightmgl]

Don't know if the adds despawn but P2 ends after 3 minutes if you do not kill them. The achievement is to get nef to 50% before he lands, so it is very possible to push him quite far with good gear. Unfortunately for us we had issues with crackling in P2 so we just pushed him to 72% and left him there. Ideally you aren't going to want 3 tanks and 4 healers because you will not have the DPS to successfully finish the encounter. We actually cut it pretty close with 2 tanks and a DPS DK handling the adds in P1 with 3 healers though we are probably slightly undergeared.

On our first nef kill I fully deactivated all of the adds successfully 3 times during Phase 3. A 4th time would have been impossible due to the rate of the fireballs (they were coming out every 3 or 4 seconds by then).

You do not need to continuously backup the whole time for most of it, in fact that is a sure way to guarantee you will not get more than 1 or 2 deactivations. If you get the hang of it you can watch the fireballs as they come outta Nef's mouth so you know when to move. When you move like that do not back up either, sidestrafe. Just be careful to move far enough so that the growing fire won't spread into them either. After the second deactivation and going for the 3rd though I was pretty much always moving.

It buys you alot more time when you get used to it if you are one of those groups like us that just didn't have the DPS to get him to 62% before he landed.