Beth'tilac

[moonkin]

Hi everybody.

We've just killed the spider tonight using 2 tanks - 5 DPS (3 casters ) - 3 healers.

After 3-4 wipes at around 10% we managed to kill her running all cooldowns.

Our main problem was transition P1 - P2 with adds remaining and the boss gaining HP.

We decided to sent our War DPS 2 times up and the third time just to down the boss to 83% and then come back down to help killing the adds. (the tank would made 3-4% more).

However, even with all dps down the boss still gained HP from about 80% to 90%.

We managed to kill the 90% running all CD's one after one.

Our compo was:

tanks : pala / war

DPS: SP - moonkin - mage - DK - war

Heal: drood - chaman - pala

So if you have good DPS and heal and you turn your cooldowns the 70-75% can be 90% like us.

good luck with this encounter

[Narina]

We're having some difficulties with this encounter, which surprised me because all in all it looked pretty simple.

Our comp:
Tanks: War (down), Bear (up)
Heals: Pally (up), druid and H priest (down)
DPS: Enh Sham, SP, Ass Rogue, Fire Mage, Frost DK

Had the Sham up top for the first 2 cycles and kept him down to help clean up for the 3rd. Boss was coming down around 83-85%.

Not having issues with keeping up p1, and the 5 dps downstairs for the 3rd cycle usually has drone under 25% and spiderlings down easy when she comes down perm. We even considered sending 2 up for 1st cycle, 1 2nd cycle, 0 3rd to get boss under 80%, but we're wiping too early in frenzy for that to be the difference right now. Priority order that worked for us was: Enh up top, rogue on drone the whole time unless dps called for help on a spiderling group, SP on spinners then drone, DK on spiderlings then spinners then Drone, Mage on Spiderlings then spinners then drone. Never had any issues with adds being left up this way.

Trouble we were having is Healing p2 when frenzy stacks got up. I set us up the following CD cycle:
SP Hymm at 20 frenzy
Pally Aura Mastery at 23
HP Hymm at 25 frenzy
Druid Tranq at 28 frenzy
Rallying cry when boss at 10% life

We were BL'ing at 20 frenzy as well.

We would get the boss to 35-40% health by 20 frenzy but our healers basically cant keep people up past 23-25 frenzy stacks. We're all around i361 gear, dps all pulls 18k+ ST dps, healers are pulling about 13-14k avg hps from my recount meters.

Usually the issue is easy to see but I'm not seeing it here. From all the reading I did I see people clearing the boss with our gear, we're just not quite handling the frenzy stacks well. Does anyone have any better tips for that?

We have very slight issues with healer mana in this fight, our Hpally gets drained up top, but he says he hasnt run oom yet, just been close. A comment here says not to put a Hpally up top, is it that big of a difference? We liked the idea since the pally can taunt his own vehicle.

Any ideas would help. We flew through Shannox after not getting started w1, but some of the raid is thinking about skipping beth til we have more gear and doing lord rhy.

[moonkin]

Hi Narina,

gearing helps in this fight and you should be able to reach the 365 very easily getting stuff from PNj and why not from Tol barad.

I would suggest you to burn BL at the beginning of P2 as we did.

We sent up our pally heal up for the up phase.

You can also sent 2 DPS for the first cycle (DK should be a good idea, we've got a war).

Our raid was an average of 370 and it helps for healers DPS and tank to have more HP and mana.

However you should be able to kill the spider if you get in P2 without boss gaining HP.

Just try and try and it should go down.

I would also suggest to you if you switch boss to try Baleroc, we have found the mecanics very easy.

Good luck

[Ghladum]

This fight has just about ruined two raid nights for my group. We are a 10man group - iLvl right under 359 since we never got a good foothold outside of one or two heroic T11 kills.

Anyhow - our DPS is sufficient on the adds down below such that we are able to send up a Rogue with the tank and healer on top of the web for all three cycles of the Smouldering Devastation. This means Beth hops down with ~74-76% HP for the last phase.

Our problem is that our DPS just cannot, absolutely cannot, get all of the spiderlings down fast enough, and the range at which Beth'tilac can consume and heal from juicing those spiderlings is absurd. So every attempt we've gotten to the last phase ends up with her dropping down at 75%, immediately healing up, usually to 95% HP, and then we burn out somewhere around 160-170% damage buff.

I'm just about positive that our group will be able to get this, it's just... it feels like a bug that you literally seem to have under 5-6 seconds to kill the Spiderlings on that last cycle, and that even when they are contained very far away from Beth'tilac (even considering the huge hitbox and the way that scales), she turns around and completely eliminates everything that the DPS has done up top for the entire fight from 40 or more yards away.

[jedikuonji]

I'm just about positive that our group will be able to get this, it's just... it feels like a bug that you literally seem to have under 5-6 seconds to kill the Spiderlings on that last cycle, and that even when they are contained very far away from Beth'tilac (even considering the huge hitbox and the way that scales), she turns around and completely eliminates everything that the DPS has done up top for the entire fight from 40 or more yards away.

This has been our issue as well. We're running it on 25s and have her at anywhere from 80% to 90% in health when she comes down and then, bam, she's back to full or near full. On our best attempt last night we burned her from 98% to 2%, so it's frustrating to pretty much lose to what feels like bad timing with adds and her drop down. It's a little comforting to know that others have been there, and I suppose we'll just have to hit harder on those last adds. If anyone has some tip on how to get past that last add spawn before she comes down I'd love to hear it.

If nothing else, I suppose some more gear will KO the fight regardless, but it's still painful.

[Fiebs]

Please notice that I'm writting this on 7/19/2011 - patch day - so what I'm about to say may be invalid as soon as servers come back up as this may be changed....

We just downed Beth last night, when she comes down from her web in the beginning of P2 she (recently) will tractor beam a spiderling from far away if there exists even one still alive. Thus when your up-top-crew comes down for the final time, call out for all DPS to burn any active groups (should be just one active group, the most recent to spawn) of spiderlings. Once they're down then they can go back to cleaning up any other adds left (probably just one half-dead drone) as they wait for Beth to come down. Granted, this transition is only 7-9 seconds, but that should be more than enough time for the DPS to burn the most recent spiderling group.

It USE to be that if the spiderlings got close to Beth she would eat them, now she beams them in reguardless of proximity. Hence why you need to have DPS switch and burn the spiderlings during that P1 to P2 transition. Again, this may be changed back to the proximity rule at any time, but as of right now (7/19/2011) she uses a beam.

[Quinafoi]

Her ability to eat the spiderlings from a great distance was in the PTR that way back in early May. She always could eat the spiderlings from a long range as far as I'm aware, it never used to be different. Only the drones were restricted to melee range for devouring them.

*edit*
Which was just hotfixed for the first time later in the same day as my original post to nerf the range on her ability to heal.

[Culture_Jam]

Quick question: What's the debuff threshold for tank swaps in P2? Is it situational/based on the tank or is there a magic number of when we should be swapping in P2?

Thanks!

[Quinafoi]

The debuff in phase two you swap tanks immediately. It's a healing debuff that builds up naturally over time and will actually fade after a short while. As soon as you see it applied the other tank should taunt immediately.

[Theotherone]

This fight is getting really depressing. We're going to try again this week. Wiped a lot last night. I'm getting used to being up stairs (still have moments of taking a web up right into meteor hole), but even when we get to second phase, she eats adds or the dps is sitting between 13 - 18k. Our RL now has me healing a tank and two dps up top on my pally, figuring we can get her down further before phase 2.

Fun times.

[Quinafoi]

@Theotherone
What I typically do is first throw out raid markers in the directions in which the spiderlings spawn. Not right where they spawn but the direction they come from so it can be seen from the middle. We tend to call out where each wave spawns from each time they spawn by calling out the respective symbol. On the third Smoldering Devastation when that last wave spawns pay close attention to where it was called out from and have the tank immediately head as far away from it as they can. By simply pulling her significantly far away quickly enough you can often avoid her eating from that last pack. At the same time however this last set that spawns is the most critical for DPS to kill immediately. If you are sending a DPS up top you may want to have them stay down the third time to make sure adds get cleaned up faster. Our kill last week which was only our second we had her land practically on top of some Spiderlings and didn't actually eat any cause the tank was far enough away that she started moving immediately.

With your DPS you should probably be shooting for around 80-85% going into the last phase which should be able to accomplish with one DPS going up the first two times and a Bane of Havoc (on the pull) or maybe just two DPS one time, one DPS the second, and none the third. At around 80% give or take you will require an average of 90k raid DPS to kill the boss in about 3 minutes which is the mark where most raids are getting their first kill. Cooldowns will generally only get you to about the 3 minute mark. Depending on when you burn Heroism/Time Warp will determine when you want to start using cooldowns. If you burn it earlier (say on the first tank swap) you'll want to start chaining cooldowns the weaker cooldowns around 40% health left on the boss. If you save it for a little later you'll want to start burning cooldowns a little sooner at say 45-50%. I typically order my cooldowns by doing all the throughput cooldowns (i.e. Tree of Life, Tranquility, Hymn) prior to the mitigation cooldowns (i.e. Spirit Link with Rallying Cry, Aura Mastery, Divine Guardian, Power Word: Barrier).

[Theotherone]

Thanks Q, this is helpful.

What we have now is a fundamental difference in philosophy in our raid group. Our RL is hung up on the dps numbers, in that when we send 1 dps up we get her down about 3 million or so; she comes down, heals up and then we wipe at about 8 million. Our RL believes that even if she doesn't heal up, we're still about 5 million short i.e. we just don't have the dps for this. My preference is to keep pushing her to phase 2 use 1 dps (although I like the idea of scaling down the dps each time up), don't let her heal and burn her. During the burn phase she's a target dummy and the dps numbers from phase 1 are kind of bogus.

Anyway, we'll see what happens tonight, but I like your advice Q. If we don't change bosses I'm going to suggest it. I also think we're really geared enough for the fight, it's a matter of just pushing it (everyone sitting at around 365 ilvl). For God's sake we have pugs on the sever downing her and groups bringing alts with blues downing her.

It's so freaking frustrating.

[Quinafoi]

Do you have any logs? How many stacks of Frenzy is she at when people start dying? What is your composition like?

I don't think you'll be able to kill her if she heals at all. I think that is relatively clear. However figuring out where the problem lies may be a bit more difficult. If stacks are simply getting too high, it may be that DPS simply isn't doing enough (perhaps too distracted still cleaning up adds at the transition, this is another reason I favor not having any DPS go up the third time). If stacks are lower when people start droping off it may be relative to your composition and simply lacking as many cooldowns to cope with the rising damage.

[Saif]

One thing I can say about this fight is that DPS numbers lie.

Our DPS ranged from 21k (SPriest & Boomkin - in charge of Spiderlings and Spinners exclusively) to 15k (SPriest & Frost DK - exclusively in charge of Drones) to 13k (Arcane Mage - exclusively on the big spider on all 3 up-phases). Those numbers might make it seem like we're way too low to get it done, but the swaps in phase 1 deflate numbers considerably and then inflate them during the do-nothing-but-burn phase 2.

She comes down with ~80% health. We have the Mage running down a few seconds early to help the clean-up team make sure no Spiderlings are out and the Spider tank (me) moves away from any remaining Spiderlings to give the team a few extra seconds to knock-back/burn them. On transition, Spiderlings > Drone. Drone should almost be dead anyway.

At that point, the two tanks flank the boss so we can taunt without moving or getting fire on anyone with the debuff and the rest of the raid is clumped up tight for heals under her butt. Hero at 50% and that comfortably gets her down before the damage gets out of hand, though the last few AoEs will need raid-wide CDs.

Before we sent up the Mage, we were wiping ~30% which made the fight and the DPS numbers seem like we were way undergear.

Sending up the mage just as an experiment to see if we could get close led to a very comfortable kill-shot. This does require your ground team to be on top of stuff making sure Drones are down in time, Spinners don't add up and Spiderlings are killed very quickly.

As an aside, we send up a resto-druid instead of the Holy Paladin as healing on the move is much more comfortable for her without draining mana and the added benefit of HoTing me up when I take the web is a good buffer for the time it takes her to get the 2nd web and come up.

[Theotherone]

Thanks all. We don't do logs. Best I can tell we're at about 26 stacks when things start to go tits up. The comp is:

Tanks: Druid Druid is my responsibility up on Beth (We've gotten used to each other and time going up webs really well)
Pally.

Healinng : Holy Pally (me)
Druid
Driud

DPS
Arcane Mage
Arcane Mage
Assassination Rogue
Elemental Shammy
Survival Hunter

That's the core group, if we're missing someone we switch in a Kitty, Warrior, Shammy or Hunter. Depends on who's around.

My pally is one of the better geared toons in the run, but not by a lot; so we're all pretty much in that 360 - 366 range for gear.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ckstraw/simple

Saif, your run sounds about exactly as ours has been going; your group sounds to be about dps wise pretty close to what we're seeing. This gives me hope.

I realize it's just a matter of time, but what I don't like doing is putting in a couple weeks (well 6 raid nights) on a boss, finally getting the rhythm down; then suddenly switching and learning something new. Seems a waste of time.

[Quinafoi]

I think the biggest issue you will have is a shortage of damage reduction cooldowns. As such, I'd recommend saving Heroism/Time Warp for it's buff to healing throughput until later in the phase as one of your survival cooldowns. I'd try to shoot for around 40% health to use it. You will likely use a cooldown to get to that point (probably one of the two Tranquilities).

[Buyakha]

My guild is having major difficulties on this boss even tho everybody is saying how easy it is. We are fairly new to FL, and we have only managed to kill Shannox. We have been trying Beth for 2 nights and it has been just awful. We would appreciate your help trying to identify whats going on and why this is going so horrible.


Raid Comp: (ilevel)
Resto Druid (370)
Resto Shaman (365)
Holy Paladin (361)
Prot Paladin (370)
Prot Warrior (369)
Hunter (365)
Hunter (371)
Shadow Priest (365)
Warlock (363)
Rogue (367)


This is what we do so far but we are not even getting passed the 1st Devastation


1. On pull we stack on the boss and kill the adds. Prot Pally, Holy Pally and Rogue go up.
2. Prot warrior tank the drone aside the raid. Warlock on the drone the whole time
3. SPriest and Hunter 1 on Spiderlings all the time
4. Hunter 2 on Spinners all the time


By the time the 1st devasation ocurrs, the guys up top come down, start killing adds and we all wipe because either we have another drone up, or we have too many spinners.
So my question is, is this a DPS issue?
Is our gear too low for this boss?
How much DPS should the group be pulling to effectively manage the kill all the adds in time? (Min)
Are we positioning incorrectly?


We will appreciate any help.


Thanks

[Narina]

Buyakha,

From your ilevels it doesn't look like it should be your gear, we've now downed him a few times with lower avg ilevels, and we send 2 dps upstairs until the first devastation. It sounds like your dps just might not be doing things well.

We have a SP on the spinners and a mage/frost dk on the spiderlings until the first devastation, then we have our enh shammy stay down to help on drones. The SP kills spinners then is onto drone. The DK kills spiderlings>helps with spinners>drone, the mage spiderlings>drone. We've never had any issue with spinners still being up when a devastation hits, and we've never had an issue with killing the first drone on time... so I'm thinking its probably something your dps is doing. Are your Spiderling team just standing around looking/waiting for the next set of spiderlings? Your SP should definitely be at least dotting spinners after each spiderling phase.

The other thing we do that helps is tank the drone close to the center where the spinners drop from so he can taunt them down. He only kites to the unused corner when/if spiderlings get close. This makes for less moving for the dps on spinners as well, they should always be in range of drone/spinners right after a spiderling spawn. Also helps our Enh Shammy help with some splash damage while killing drones.

Hope that helps.

[Quinafoi]

If the warlock is destruction, they should use Bane of Havoc on Beth'tilac on the pull in order to do 15% of their damage to her even while below. I'd actually recommend sending up the Prot Warrior rather than the Prot Paladin due to the magic reduction of shield block. Also when the third devastation occurs a warrior has better mobility if Beth'tilac needs to be pulled away from where the last set of Spiderlings spawned from. For DPS I'd recommend having both the Hunter and the Shadow Priest on Spinners and switch to the Drone once all Spinners are dead. And if you have your paladin on the bottom they don't necessarily need to be in range of Spinners to taunt them, they just need to be in range of the player (likely the hunter) for Righteous Defense. If Spinners are on the drone tank they can use AoE to kill them and apply some damage to the drone as well. You want to kill the Spinners as fast as possible and do catch up on the drone. Your hunter assigned to them can distract them down and your protection paladin can opt to taunt them off once they have more than one down. Hunter and Warlock I'd have on Spiderlings for Frost Traps and Shadow Nova. Additionally your Restoration Druid should be able to help as well by using Wild Mushrooms, if they are Shadow Novaed in the frost trap the druid can easily use the stun duration to preplant three mushrooms at the edge of the trap and detonate them as they pass. Send the rogue up for two waves only. On the third wave keep them on the lower level to help clean up adds. Provided that DPS focuses on their assignments drones should die shortly before or shortly after the next one spawning. If you are having trouble dealing with the adds you should only send up one DPS ever and take advantage of Bane of Havoc for a little additional damage. If you have sufficient control of adds then you can afford to send up an additional DPS the first time. Make sure people are doing their jobs and not waiting for their job to come to them or switching to something else.

[Theotherone]

I HATE PROGRESSION. So we wipe on this again last night for the first hour of the raid. Getting her to 12 million at one point. The issues are no longer up top (well expect constantly sending up two dps is ooming me for the start of phase 2); I can do that dance up there in my sleep now I've been up there so much, it's down below.

So, in typical impatient fashion we spend the next hour wiping on a different boss Alyasatrzor or whatever that freaking bird's name is. I'm convinced that the Blizz designers have a real gallows sense of humor since that fight appears to be designed as one big epic "don't stand in the fire".