Nefarian Simplified Strat 10 man

[Pwerhouse]

My question is: Why wouldnt everyone do the strat I list below? Please list all benefits, cons, or anything note worthy to add.


I have read alot of material on this encounter, kept an open mind. I have come to the conclusion that people are making this encounter way too complicated when it really doesnt have to be.

I watched a videos and read thread on successful guilds using this strategy, which in my opinion keeps the fight as simple as possible.


I like this strat and want to try it, this is my reccomendation:

Phase 1, we burn Onyxia to zero and ignore Nef.
Phase 2, we burn the adds to zero and ignore Nef.
Phase 3, we burn Nef to zero.

P3 really relies on a healer and a good add kiter, which we have.

So why wouldnt we do this?

We have got nef to 34% on our best attempt using the standard strat timing crackles in p1 and 2. The above strat just seems so much easier.

I look forward to any comments.

[Quinafoi]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhzCA-Y8IRM
Fast forward to 7:03 and listen through to 7:14 for the one key point which defeats your strategy.

As phase 3 progresses though, Nefarian casts Shadowflame Sparks at the bone warriors more and more quickly, eventually filling the room with Shadowflame and leaving the adds tank with no where to kite them to reset them, creating a soft enrage mechanic.

There is a soft enrage mechanic in phase 3 that will eventually wipe you if you spend too much time in that phase.

Fires spawn faster and faster, but don't despawn any faster. Eventually the room is filled with fire simply because there is a finite amount of space.



Have you actually tried your own proposition or are you asking for feedback before even attempting it yourself? Chances are if you attempted it you would see that it is not very feasible, at least until DPS is much higher than at the point where this would be a progression kill.

[Pwerhouse]

Im not sure if I agree with the guys comment "causing a soft enrage timer" as I have read in posts, if the kiting tank tanks around the entire room while MT moving Nefs head the flame will despawn eventually giving the kiting tank room to kite.

We have not tried this strat, so I am asking for comments and views. Our DPS in our raid is very high where I feel where I feel this strat is feasible.

Have you tried this strat or seen other information on other guilds that have sucessfully done it this way?

[klausi]

There is a soft enrage mechanic in phase 3 that will eventually wipe you if you spend too much time in that phase.

Fire despawns and the minimum time is 10s between two blaze..

All heroic raids do it the way Pwerhouse described there's no reason not to do it on normal mode as well if you feel more comfortable not with no pushing during phase 1/2.

[Pwerhouse]

Refering to sakdaddys post HERE on march 23, 2011

1. You don't need any Crackles in P1 or P2, and there is no point in doing them. You lose dps overall by splitting your raid onto different targets, and Phase 3 is perfectly controllable forever, and very easy for everyone except that a single offtank requires a bit of focus.

We use a Prot Paladin with a Prot Warrior using Intervene on him as a cooldown for Crackles in P3. When fire is about to come, the Paladin with aggro moves the adds just far enough away so they won't get hit, but doesn't drag them so far as to restrict his kite path later on. Keep moving them before the fire spawns, but minimizing overall movement at the same time.

The MT just slowly spins Nef the entire time with the raid staying on the sides of Nef, rarely having to move too much. The whole raid just slowly rotates in a circle during P3, burning Nef to zero, healing both tanks who take predictable, healable damage, and using a rotation of 2 barriers, 1 divine guardian as cooldowns for each Crackle.

Phase 1, we burn Onyxia to zero and ignore Nef.
Phase 2, we burn the adds to zero and ignore Nef.
Phase 3, we burn Nef to zero.

This works on Heroic, and I recommend it on normal mode too.

[Pwerhouse]

Proof this strat works
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfN3NCHbihY
I will post later tonight on the results

[Bung]

There are a few issues with this strat. I'm not an expert so please keep that in mind. In phase 3 he shoots the fire towards the adds at a faster pace over time. You need for the adds to not get hit at all, die, and reset. Otherwise they grow and kill the tank way too easily. Also, turning Nef just over complicates things imo and also involves a tail swipe for the kiter. Kitting around the pillars can be a problem for the healer on the kiter, and it's generally a good idea to keep the kiter in range of all 3 healers. A simple strat is to pull nef to the north side between the two pillars. This gives the kiter the most possible space to move and eliminates the tail swipe. If you do 2 crackles in phase one and 2 in phase 2 you only have 5 to deal with in Phase 3.

[Beefius]

I cant really see a downside to doing it this way... I watched the video linked above; phase 3 took them around 7 mins with 5 DPS doing an average of 18.8k + MT doing 11k on heroic 10 mode, also their first heroic kill of nef.
I figure a normal 10 attempt on nef using the same strat should be able to take him down even easier, since he has 28 million HP vs 51 million on heroic; id expect the top 5 DPS to pull anywhere from 17k-11k depending on class & gear, so there is no real issue of the so-called 'soft enrage' of running out of floor space. From what I can tell, yes nef casts shadowblaze sparks more rapidly as phase 3 goes on, but actually they cap out at 10 secs after the first 5 times he casts it, within 1:30 of phase 3... that just gives the OT time to get his shit together, and no group is going to take out nef in under 1:30 of phase 3 anyway.

If nothing else, its a perfect way to train a new group for all 3 phases of the fight; once they get the hang of it and become more confident, they could go for crackles in P1 & 2 if they so choose... but i think there is a definite advantage to doing it this way, because you will minimise the time spend in P2 by ranged dps being able to concentrate on the chromatic prototypes rather than trying to split their damage between them and nef. Seriously, if you can cope with 5 crackles in P3, why not 9?

[Pwerhouse]

Our pgrogress last night.

Best attempt 40%. Our tank kept dying at 45% on nef getting one shot by the adds as they kept getting hit by fire. This was really our second night working in p3 so no one was frustrated with the OT as it was a learning curve.

It was a very successful raid night. Everyone learned alot about the encounter and especially phase three.

I think we are going to get 2-3 crackles in p1 1 in p2 and finish nef off in p3 this way.

We will likely do the zerg start when we have kiting the adds perfected.

[Ryu0498]

I imagine your strat could work well however i dont see why you wouldnt want to take atleast 1 crackle on phase 1.

Our guild just killed him tonight after 2 nights of wipes.

We used the following strategy:

Phase 1 - take nef down to about 81 or 82% allowing for 1 crackle to occur during phase 1.

Phase 2 - Nuke down adds and ignore nef.

Phase 3 - main tank tanking nef in centre of the room rotating him as needed to allow me to kite the adds around the outer edges of the room.

our setup was:

Tanks:

2x Warrior (Prot)

Healers:

Priest (Disc)
Shaman (Resto)
Paladin (Holy)

DPS:

Hunter (MM)
Warrior (Fury)
DK (Frost)
Druid (Balance)
Warlock (Destruction)

i know alot of tactics suggest taking 2 crakles in p1, 1 crackle in p2, the rest in p3. But rather than burn alot of healer mana taking crackles during p1 and p2 we decided cutting nefs health by 18 - 19% in p1 was enough meaning we only had around 80% to burn come phase 3.

[Garganchewin]

Assuming you have competent tanks and healers, p1 crackles pose no more threat to your raid than p3 crackles.

The benefit of burning through crackles in p1, is it lets your raid-wide CDs fully reset before p3, thereby increasing the amount of raid-wide CDs available for crackles throughout the fight.

Yes, it's that simple. Burning through 9 crackles, without gap time for CDs to reset, makes the fight needlessly difficult. I'd advise you go with the more traditional strat.

[Fayre]

I think in the 10 man version of the encounter it is a valid strategy, as kiting 6 adds in the final phase is relatively simple and you're not as likely to 'lose' any adds during the process like you might in the 25 man. The healing requirement is also a little higher in the first phase in the 10 man and I can see the appeal of having a relatively simple burn at the end.

However, your kiter has to be excellent, and he'll need to be quite careful to use the full space and not move the adds too far on early Shadowflames, or he'll run out of space. It's all about controlled movement rather than constant motion.

Mostly when we've done the fight on 10 man, we push a couple of Crackles in p1 and then have the rest in p3. I can't imagine that kiting for another minute or two would make a lot of difference.

[Takethecake]

There are a few issues with this strat. I'm not an expert so please keep that in mind. In phase 3 he shoots the fire towards the adds at a faster pace over time. You need for the adds to not get hit at all, die, and reset. Otherwise they grow and kill the tank way too easily. Also, turning Nef just over complicates things imo and also involves a tail swipe for the kiter. Kitting around the pillars can be a problem for the healer on the kiter, and it's generally a good idea to keep the kiter in range of all 3 healers. A simple strat is to pull nef to the north side between the two pillars. This gives the kiter the most possible space to move and eliminates the tail swipe. If you do 2 crackles in phase one and 2 in phase 2 you only have 5 to deal with in Phase 3.

We tank him in the middle in 25 man... we started out tanking him on the side and the space becomes very limited about halfway through phase 3 with all the fire. Once we switched to tanking him in the middle I think we two shot him. The whole point of the nef tank rotating him is that nobody ever gets hit by the tailswipe... as far as pillars creating LoS issues, the kite tank healers should be with the kite tank in front of the the kite path... moving with him. LoS is never an issue then.

The only issue at all for this strat is basically flawless kiting on the kite tank's part. Once the fire starts coming every 10 seconds you have to minimize movement while never letting the add's energy reset. Like other people have said their is no reason not to burn nef to 79-71% in phase 1... and after the patch with all the extra cooldowns being added phase 2 healing will be made much easier. Although for heroic I think perhaps just ignore nef during phase 2 will remain the smart choice.

[Rudolpho]

Don't listen to these people. That is the best strat by far. We did not figure this out until we were working on heroic, but we used it even when we went back to normal (before we were able to down heroic) and it worked amazingly well.

The problem with pushing crackles in phase 1 is that it lowers your dps, and in phase 2 it is needless damage that your healers don't need to heal. And trust me on this lowering your dps. We managed to get nef (heroic) to 8% at one point while splitting damage on nef and ony in the first phase, and hit enrage. We downed him the next day while just burning ony in phase 1 and ended up around 45 seconds ahead of enrage. That was with worse luck on the dominions as well.

Once your offtank gets the add kiting down, as long as he knows how far to move and moves somewhat slowly (aka, move when fire is coming out then stop when you get just far enough so the fire won't reach you before the next is thrown), then you can pretty much spend as much time in phase 3 as you want. It is by far the easiest phase imo.

The only hard thing about phase 3 is how long it lasts and the chance of the offtank getting gibbed by big adds + crackle...but in normal you don't have to worry about enrage and can slow dps while adds die and healers aren't going to be getting mind controlled, so it is really not a huge issue if cooldowns are used well.

[Superworm]

The strategy totally depends the ability of your kiter. If you were wiping at 45%, then obviously your kiter were not fully resetting the adds more than once. But it's good training and you will need it if you're also planning to fight the heroic mode Nef.