I've taken a spin at creating a video for our Nefarian 10-man first time kill, in the hopes of doing more videos in the future, and in honor of the awesome stuff that's created here on TankSpot.com.
Please let me know what you think; constructive criticism is welcome. Yes, I'm still experimenting with just how high I can go on recording resolution without bogging down my fps in-game; I will probably try a somewhat higher resolution setting next time.
In the meantime, happy viewing, for anyone who finds this useful.
Standard video
Video w/ commentary guide
Thanks in advance for any feedback or constructive criticism.
Decent, I think your voice is fairly suited for commentary.
Further: I'll try to convince our group to use your Nef-in-middle, as handling the adds in Phase 3 is our biggest problem currently... Sadly we got no offtank-possibility and simple have to CC them in Phase 1. Although we already managed to cc them very close together, they still stood up one after another. Do you think using the first Nefarian-Breath to hit the adds intentionally may help?
Thank you for the video ^^
Last edited by Yagamoth; 01-25-2011 at 07:29 AM.
Originally Posted by Yagamoth
The suggestion for your adds challenge at the start of p3 is that as your adds tank grabs the initial adds, do NOT kite them (far) away from the fire. Keep the first add to pop close to the fire. The fire will then "chase" adds tank, and you can actually kite the fire through the other adds on the ground nearby until they are all up. Once you have most/all of them up, deliberately let them get hit by the next Shadowflame spark from Nefarian (which comes about 30 seconds later).
At that point, you should have all of the adds up, and they should all be on a matching energy timer (at full energy from the latest spark). Then, do the rest of the p3 adds tanking "as normal" from that point forward. You should be able to reset them all together through the end of the fight. Although the adds may be getting a little big when you reset them all in the second Shadowflame spark to come (the first was the one that woke up a couple of them), only the first 1-2 adds that popped up should be getting really big. You can manage this with some early tank cooldowns. If you can survive from the second shadowflame spark resetting all the adds until the first time they go to sleep 50 seconds later, you should be in sync for the rest of the fight.
It's worth noting that we also liked this Nef-in-the-middle strat because it leaves our Nef-tank and raid healers in range of the adds tank to help do some spot healing in a pinch. We found this dramatically reduced the number of times our adds tank got gibbed by the adds plus an Electrocute as the fight wore on. (I didn't have room to cover that part of the discussion in the video commentary, but we had tried several different p3 positioning strats and found this one to be the most effective for us by far).
We've been using the Nef in middle strategy for awhile now and it definitely makes the add kiting a complete and utter joke. 3 Deactivations is possible if you're doing it right that way and the fire will never reach the middle of the room where the raid is, eliminating the two largest problems of the phase. Just gotta watch out for tail swipes and rotating the dragon as needed.
I noticed the possibility to help out with the addtank-healing, that's part of why I consider it fairly good
However, you suggest to let the adds be hit intentionally by the first spark as soon as all of the skeletons are up to have them drop all at the same time. I absolutely support the idea of having them drop at the same time. But isn't that easier achieved by deliberately facing Nefarian towards the pile of skeletons and let them all be hit by the first breath?
I have a question. How do you manage to keep Nef from gibbing you from his electrocute in the 2nd phase? We were pushing for 2 crackles during that phase for a while, then eventually stopped trying for any at all when we realized that it would randomly 1 shot people from full health. It was often hitting people for 110k dmg (we had mark for resist up as well) and just instantly killing them and it seems it is only in this phase that it ever hits that hard. At first it seemed to be on one platform only, and we were trying to find if that platform was missing some buff, but then it started happening randomly on different platforms with no rhyme or reason.
Anyone else having this problem?
Edit: Excellent guide btw. I hope you release more of these.
@ Rudolpho: So far we successfully went for 2 crackles in Phase 2. We have a protection Paladin use his group CD on one and "simply" heal through the other. (Though, it's possible to go for an early crackle, wait for the group CD and then crackle again)
The best advices I can give you:
- Have everyone in your raid use his or her class-cooldowns to lower the crackle-damage. Everyone
-- Except for Hunters, everyone has a reliable cooldown. It's probably the best to give the hunter a Priest on the Platform or some sort of external CD
- Have every of your DDs capable of doing so heal themselves in some way (Rogue: Recuperate, etc.)
- Balance the groups the best you can, so your 4-man platform isn't harder to heal than the 3-man (For example: I as Shaman Healer have a Hunter, DK Tank and Pala Tank on our Platform. I barely have to heal the tanks and they can even throw some quick heals if needed)
- Every Hybrid-Class can throw a quick heal to top themselves off before the crackle
Actually, simply use all your class abilities.. Health Pots, Health Stones - get used to use them, you won't need these afterwards anymore if you handle it correctly.
Edit: Another question: Does Nefarian come down after 2 crackles automatically? If yes, there is no reason to go for a second crackle, unless you are going for the achievement.
@Rudolpho - I agree with Yagamoth's comments. Virtually every class has some way to help mitigate and survive this spike damage. If you're seeing damage that's higher than it is in other phases, I would guess that perhaps you have a shaman whose totem is out of range for resists in phase 2, causing some group members to seem to take higher damage in this phase (because they don't have the nature resist buff). We found the paladin "raid-wall" to be a huge help here as well.
@Yagamoth - No, Nefarian does not automatically come down after 2 crackles automatically. He only comes down after 3 minutes, or when all the Chromatic Prototypes are dead, whichever occurs first. Aside from the achievement, though, some groups will push for 2 crackles in phase 2 simply to shorten the duration of phase 3, as the soft enrage mechanic of growing adds with less and less room to kite makes it very difficult to manage. I wouldn't put that forth as a "standard" strat, but if you have a group that is very heavy on appropriate survival cooldowns where you can manage it, doing 2 Crackles in p2 can really help shorten the duration of p3 for a kill.
The issue isn't missing a hunter or shaman nature resist. It is that he randomly selects a platform to give a super powered crackle to in this phase and we cannot figure out what is causing it. We were not having any issues with it at first, then noticed that randomly entire platforms were getting gibbed.
We now go for no crackles in that phase and just take him into phase 3 with 71% health, but it would be great to be able to go for a crackle in that phase without the chance at insta gibs. The last time we tried for one, one of our platforms consisting of a rogue, lock, and paladin got hit for 100k+ on the rogue and lock and the paladin got completely 1 shot with a hit of 116k (that is with druid mark, so he had some nature resist). According to wowwiki, that is higher than he should possibly be able to do with 0 nature resistance as the spells dmg is listed as "Generates a massive bolt of lightning that strikes the ground, inflicting 103950 to 106050 Nature damage on all enemy targets. "
How is this doing 10k more dmg than the maximum it possibly could with 0 nature resist?
I believe we will get him this week one way or another by just fine tuning our phase 3, as our dps is quite high and our heals are superb, but it seems a bit silly to me that part of the encounter could 1 shot players with no way to effectively stop it. Depending on how the first phase goes, we do not always have guardian, iceblock, bubble, etc available for that first crackle.
Edit : To clarify, we know it cannot be the lack of hunter or shaman resist, as we have neither and this only happens in the 2nd phase. It does not hit nearly as hard in the 1st or 3rd phase. We plan on trying him again tonight and will have a shaman so going to try putting a resist totem in the center of the room before getting on the platforms to see if we can get it on the entire raid.
Last edited by Rudolpho; 01-25-2011 at 09:47 AM.
@Rudolpho
I'm not certain what to say. There must be something else going on. I just looked through over 30 attempts' worth of logs that we have for the fight, and I cannot find a single instance in all of those electrocutes where there was ever a hit for more than 106k before resists. The spell damage listing appears to be accurate to me, and is entirely in line with everything I can find from any/every log we ever ran, including multiple group comps with/without a shaman totem. Obviously, the attempts without totems (we never had a hunter) had less resist damage reduction, but in no case did we ever have an attempt where Crackle exceeded 106k.
We did, however, have numerous attempts where a Shadowflame Barrage from Nefarian gibbed someone in the instant after an electrocute, or caused an electrocute death because the shadowflame barrage took the person under 100k health the moment before electrocute went off. Is it at all possible that's the situation here?
No, it was definitely one hit for 116k. Pulled directly from his combat log. It seems to be a common theme too in that 2nd phase. It never happens on multiple platforms, but one platform will have everyone on it instagibbed from full health to dead, while the others all get knocked down to between 20-50% health depending on dmg reduction cooldowns. It does not happen with every crackle, but seems to be at least every other one.
And it's not a paladin casting Hand of Sacrifice or something like that? Very odd. :/ I wonder if anyone else has seen this in their logs?
Nope, he wasn't using Hand of Sacrifice. He usually uses that phase as a mana regen phase because he has no problem keeping his platform topped and judging \ meleeing the add. It just came out of nowhere. Our priest had been complaining that things like that happened to him a few times, but we thought he had to be messing up something until this happened.
Very strange... Can you use some combat log tracker for WoL or something like that?
Btw: We one shot it with your tactic... It's ridiculously easy this way, thank you
--> We used the first breath of Nefarian to wake up all the adds because they were fairly spread. This helped a bunch ^^
You also have the option of doing a third crackle before takeoff if your DPS is higher. Keep in mind that each crackle adds a good chunk to Ony'x electric meter (20% or 25%) so to do a third crackle you will most likely have to actually cause the crackle after Ony is dead or she will get a large boost to her meter and explode.
As for electrocute, I've never seen it hit harder then it should. Was someone using something that would make them take extra damage such as Death Wish?
Yeah, I mention this as an option in the commentary at about 8:45min into the video. We ultimately found it just wans't necessary to push that hard, but it's certainly an option if your healers are strong enough to top everyone up quickly on the transition.
Awesome guide... thanks a lot, hope we see more of this good work (hard to find many 10man guides these days (: )
With the success of this video guide (over 30,000 hits in about 2 months, woo!), I've decided to produce more guides.
Next up is Al'akir, which I'm posting now, with more to come (footage recorded, I just need to edit!). Enjoy!
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