Rhyolith and the Flaming Stomp of Doom... avoidable?

[Tielyn]

Hiya, Tankspot gang. Me again.

Beth'tilac finally bit the dust this week, mostly because we stacked our best DPS and heals into a single 10's group and used all the lessons we learned from all of your helpful insights. (I, unfortunately, did not get to be in on the kill, because I was busy shepherding some of our less geared/skilled folks through a BoT run.) So the next day we went to work on Rhyolith/10. Our strategy was to one tank the adds (lucky me) along with our best hunter and our Mushroom-happy boomkin plus our best warlock to mow them down. Three healers (disco/pally/woodsy) to keep everyone up, and the rogue, warrior, and the other feral druid on flaming boss driving duty.

After a few false starts, we got the hang of how to get the adds under control, and managed to land in the second phase. Being the only tank, I pick up Rhyolith, and before you could blink, half the raid was dead, and the rest of us hung on stubbornly down to 4%. We're not sure what killed us, but the primary theory was 'Concussive Stomp'. The disc priest put the bubble up and it didn't help the next time we got down to phase 2, either, when we had everyone gather up. So the 10,000 copper piece question: does Concussive Stomp have a proximity factor on how much damage you take?
* It seemed to me I took less damage when I was tanking and running away when his Really Obvious Cast Bar went up for it.
* Some of the other ranged raid members were seeing more resist the farther away they were, -and- DBM gives a warning for it, so we're of the opinion that 'run away' is the rule
- but the descriptions online all say 'does X damage to all raid members' and says nothing about 'within X yards' or the like.

The raid lead and heal lead felt that stacking up in melee-ish range was better for group heals, but my gut feeling was that we need to move. Since we couldn't agree, I said, 'I'll ask the folks on Tankspot. They're amazing.' That ended the discussion.

So....do we run, or gather?

Thanks in advance...
-Tielyn

PS. Bonus question: Shannox. On 25s, would it make more sense to use four tanks, two for Shannox and two for Riplimb (taunting for the latter, judicious threat gen for the former) just for the redundancy factor and being able to hold both critters still for DPS, especially when two of our tanks don't do mobility very well?

[Tengenstein]

The following is all conjecture.

I'm not seeing any corraletion between distance and Resistance. On our Run yesterday the most resists where had by one of the ranged, however the least resists where also had by one of the ranged. I know the Knock back eefect has a 20 yard range but otherwise the damage seem raid wide. One thing to be mindful of is that each time Rhyolith Steps on a volcanoe he gains a buff called "Molten Armor" this increases his damage by 2% per stack, If your stomping out all the volcanoes, not just the ignited ones you can stack this quite high aslso aslong as an ignited volcanoe is active it will be stacking "Eruption" on your raid, which stacks to 14 and you can have up to 3 stacks (of 14) of it at any one time in 10 ma. Each stack increase your fire damage taken by 10%.

Combined these two things can make healing impossible. We've found it best to ignore dormant Volcanoes and focus on getting he active one done as fast as possible. this does mean P1 is quite long, but we also go into P2 with only 5 or so stacks of Molten armour and minimal stacks of Eruption. We then all stack up on our hunter (cept the tank), since he's the only person with a range issue, and and Nuke, we pop raid CDs for the Stomps but otherwise we take it to the face.

[leethaxor]

distance and damage aren't related. What is related is stacks. We will use raid wide cooldowns like raid wall, tranq, and AM for some of the higher stack stomps.

[marklar]

the first stomp he does in phase 2 is huge, and by this time the volcano stacks may be high on some ppl. you've got to have everyone topped off for it, or they will die.

i dunno if it's distance related, but we stay away just in case. our raid stacks up ~25 yards away from him and we use raid cooldowns while he's lying on the ground, while the tank picks him up and keeps him where he is. if you can live through that first stomp, he'll be dead in under 30 seconds.

[Outbackjack]

On a similar topic of avoidable damage, can the active volcanos be ranged in any way? Or do they apply the stacks no matter where you are on the platform?

[Tengenstein]

Eruption is listed as having Unlimited Range, though i persoanlly haven't tested it.

[Quinafoi]

I think you may be looking in the wrong place for the cause of your issues.

The Eruption debuff is now cleared when transitioning into phase 2 of the fight.

4.2 Hotfix July 14th
4.2 Hotfix Blog on Official Site


Bottom line, if people aren't topped off going into this phase then the damage of the initial stomp will simply kill you. The solution to the problem is to simply make sure people are topped off going into the new phase so they survive while the raid repositions in the first few seconds of the phase (i.e. no tunnel vision and getting hit by a magma flow and no unnecessary add damage).

[Prexie]

After a few false starts, we got the hang of how to get the adds under control, and managed to land in the second phase. Being the only tank, I pick up Rhyolith, and before you could blink, half the raid was dead, and the rest of us hung on stubbornly down to 4%. We're not sure what killed us, but the primary theory was 'Concussive Stomp'. The disc priest put the bubble up and it didn't help the next time we got down to phase 2, either, when we had everyone gather up. So the 10,000 copper piece question: does Concussive Stomp have a proximity factor on how much damage you take?


PS. Bonus question: Shannox. On 25s, would it make more sense to use four tanks, two for Shannox and two for Riplimb (taunting for the latter, judicious threat gen for the former) just for the redundancy factor and being able to hold both critters still for DPS, especially when two of our tanks don't do mobility very well?

Question 1: You can't range his phase 2 stomp. Stack up to heal and use raid cooldowns intelligently.

Question 2: Shannox and Riplimb are untauntable so 4 tanks does not make sense. You have to be able to kite/trap Rip/Shannox to handle stacks; it's just part of the fight.

[Tielyn]

We'll try the 25 foot starting range and do our best to top things folks off before the phase starts (they're used to this for the Ony fight by now), and report back.

And I'm aware that Shannox is untauntable, but I thought Riplimb was tauntable. Ah well. I figured that our non-mobile tanks could at least do Shannox on the Patchwerk principle, but if we have to teach them to kite dance, it's going to be a looooong night. (Our two best Shannox kiters are both feral druids, but the 'main' tanks are the ones who don't grok the 'move' part well.) My game plan for the evening (we have 20 signed up) is to split up the tanks so that the two mobile tanks get Shannox to play with and the two lesser threat/mobility tanks go do the cleanup run on BwD tonight.

Thankee.
-Tielyn

[Quinafoi]

I figured that our non-mobile tanks could at least do Shannox on the Patchwerk principle

What?
Patchwerk wasn't tank swaped (or taunt immune for that matter), Patchwerk had a hateful strike mechanic which is simply a fucntion of health and threat in melee range. There is nothing in the mechanics of this encounter that share similaties to Patchwerk other than baseline gameplay mechanics (such as the person with the most threat, has aggro... mechanics which apply universally in the game).

[Tengenstein]

I think he means the tanks that are crap can just sit there and wail on the boss.

[Fetzie]

I think he means the tanks that are crap can just sit there and wail on the boss.

Why not just tell them to respecc dps and do 10-15k dps more then?

[Tengenstein]

becuase they probably still have to tank it.

[Fetzie]

Ah misread the post, my bad.

[Tielyn]

The Patchwerk Principle -- make sure your better geared tank is second on the threat meter. I had been thinking that instead of moving all over the place we might just keep two tanks on top two threat and just have one ease off so that the other tank would take the Rends for awhile, then ease off and let the other tank take over. When we lost a tank, it was really hard for them to save the rest of the DPS from being eaten after that because they had to climb over all the DPS on the threat meter.

However....

*grins, looking all smoky-furred*

Shannox/10 down. With the dps doing 19, 19, 16, and 9 K DPS, and the two kiting tanks doing 9 (Shannox) and 3.5 (Riplimb). Difference is that we had all the smart people who can follow instructions and could stay out of traps. And my Riplimb tank and I are aces at kiting (hence our low DPS). Judicious use of traps, slows, and the occasional Stampeding Roar was all that was required. Considering half the group had never seen the fight before tonight, it's all on the tanks and the healers that are following them.

And just for kicks, since we had 45 minutes left in the raid, we went and gave Rhyolith another go despite our lacking DPS.

...the 25 yard gather (but the tank), heal everyone to full rule? Worked like a charm. Rhyloth/10 down, to boot.

Thank you all. Add two bosses to our kill list; we couldnae have done it without you.

*salutes*

Next stop, Alysrazor or Baeleroc.

-Tielyn

[Tengenstein]

Take home message; If your helaers/DPS can't move out of traps, and your tanks can't drop thier stacks then they cannot do the fight, and therefore shouldn't really be brought.

Unless you're okay with carrying them.

[Quinafoi]

I think you aren't understanding how Hateful Strikes function. If you lost a tank on Patchwerk, you're going to lose DPS. Patchwerk really is nothing like Shannox.

[Tielyn]

As I understood it (at the time, I wasn't one of the tanks but rather a healer), we had to keep the tank with more health second on the threat meters so he/she took the Hateful Strikes, which meant the lesser geared tank had to make sure to stay in first place on threat, which meant that the 'better' tank had to throttle back on their aggro, lest they overtake the first tank. This is how we had the fight explained to us, anyway (I wasn't even a raid leader then). We also kept a third tank on the threat meters in 25, because we'd invariably lose one of the two tanks when Patchwerk hit his soft enrage. We'd battlerez the dead tank, then tell all the DPS to lay off while the rezzed tank made their way back up the threat meters to take over from the emergency backup tank.

Maybe that's not how the fight was supposed to be done, but that's how we were doing it. :} And I just checked (you had me thinking I was nuts, Quinafoi) -- WoWiki still says:

Hateful Strike
A rapid and powerful melee strike on a single target/two targets for 20,000-27,000/~80,000 physical damage. Cast every second. Hateful Strike also adds threat to the three players who have the highest threat. The target of Hateful Strike is determined by three requirements:

1. Proximity: Targets must be within melee range of Patchwerk.
2. Threat: Targets must be less than first in threat, but at least second/third highest threat. This requirement does not apply if only one target is in melee range.
3. Current Health: The target must have the highest health of all available targets.

...
Assuming you have 2 tanks, it is advised to let your "best" tank (the one with most health and armor — dodge is useful) be the Hateful tank, and have your lesser geared tank take Patchwerk's normal hits.

What I was referring to in this situation was that on one of our attempts, I (as Shannox tank) died at the last phase, and after getting rezzed, I was trying to get back up over the other DPS before the OT died and he chewed through the DPS. Managed to save two out of the three of them after the OT died, but then he hit his enrage and we all bought the farm. And then we downed him on the very next attempt.

We have a saying in our guild: "There's the right way to do the fight, and then sometimes there's the Prophecy way." We try and come up with alternate methods to beat the fight mechanics when the standard published way doesn't always work out, because someone can't do what's involved, or we don't have the right character to do the role*. Because I know our normal main tanks can't cope with high mobility fights (the other druid and I are the third and backup tanks because we can dual role), I was looking for less-movement alternatives, hence the notion of keeping tauntless threat-management of the 1-2 positions as a possibility. That's why I was asking about using a threat juggle.

Said by the other competent raid lead who got to watch me and the druid do the Shannox dance: "You two make it look easy, but even after the long explanation I still don't see how you do it."

"Lots of practice." I said. "We took an entire 2 1/2 hour run and just wiped over and over while we learned the technique. We had -no- shot at downing him because we didn't have the DPS with us at the time, but we at least learned the dance part. And I really, really, don't want to bring our other tanks to do this one."

He said, 'Yeah. I'm thinking we may want to save the lockout and skip these two next week.'

"Baeleroc doesn't require a lot of movement..." I said.

We're rapidly getting into a situation where we may have to figure out how to separate the competent raiders from the less-than-competent ones. It's not going to be easy or fun, but we're not going anywhere with 10+ people who aren't paying attention and yet expect to down bosses.

Ah, the joys of being GM....
-Tielyn

* Our second and subsequent downings of Magmaw/25 at the front of Cataclysm after our lone DK kiter went AWOL used a non-standard method on the worms: throw a bear tank (me) at them, deal with the extra lava parasite spawns, and DPS the worms down between head phases, since our hunter was Marks, our BM hunter was squishy, and our mages were Arcane and didn't believe in AoE. When we didn't have a ton of ranged DPS, we assigned an extra healer to keep me up and just threw all the DPS on the boss. (It's a lot easier now to do the latter while there are less worms, they're more squishy, and I have better gear, because I can actually kill the worms on my own now while tanking them.)

[Tengenstein]

Well there's adapting the Strategy to fit the raid composition and then adapting the raid strategy to carry the incompetent. There's Rarely one correct way of doing a fight, my guilds never done magamw the way the tankspot video says, we've always had 1 tank tank the worms and have the DPS tunnel the Boss, it just worked as it turns out the prot warrior was the best AoE back in December.

It's my personal Snobbery but saying "i can only tank if i don't have to move the boss", is like saying "i can go invisible if everyone closes their eyes", If you don't find the shannox tanking mechanics just a little bit fun than maybe you shouldn't be tanking. (Granted it's aging aswell as Heigan did, but atleast this one was fun the first time)

[Katarn]

You can range the knockback, but not the damage of the stomp. And TBH the knockback into flame rivers is usually what kills people.