First tries on Lich king set up

As i explained earlier, pushing to get the folks who won't be here through the summer their title first, tomorrow night's line up and role is following...i understand our normal rules are play what you like etc, but we're on the end boss and I'm strictly looking at this at our chance to succeed. After reviewing logs from sindragossa etc, here is what I hope to have on to rock the big man tomorrow night.

Mimic
altusjp
Lazid
Kyarr (?) out of town currently if not home...Wahin
Fiyuh (?) internet connection iffy while out of town...Fyrefly
Kokopelli-Shadow
Warrelf-specced for 10% AP buff? If able please do.
Dontpanik-Holy
Fabolous-disc
utilicow-resto

When we get to hard modes we'll likely be 2 healing a lot more frequently but for our "final" encounter this should give us the best chances...for those curious loot roles are always for main spec first.
JJ

Despite a lot of mistakes (attributed mostly to first time here and missing out on Tuesday) last night was actually better then I expected. We have Phase one about as down pat as we're likely to get it a few mild changes though for Tuesday night:

During the transition we'll let JP leave off on his own with his add or two and let the plague kill off the adds without any dps or heals near JP so they'll die from the plague quickly.

Blow up LK as fast possible to ensure only 3 big boys spawn for the duration, if the 4th one pops right before transition we're in for a world of hurt

All in all we have a quarter of the fight flowing beautifully now for the rest of it. Currently reading up more to see how to get the transition phase to go smoother, post your inputs somewhere in the strats area.

Again Nice work everyone, but to keep the grins coming lets look at what all we overcame last night...

1)OT forgot to pull 80% more threat....
2)MT tried to throw down a campfire and start cooking during initial pull
3)RL and his hunter completely forgot about tranq shotting enrages
4)Holy priest ran off the cliff...BEFORE the fight hehe
5)literally saw a defile get BIGGER then the platform

All that being said we STILL got through what i have read is the second hardest phase of the fight...first being the transitions. so again nice work yall, lets see if we can get firmly into second phase on tuesday.
JJ

Raging Sprits and You: A giude to the transition phase


During each transition phase there will be 3 raging spirits that spawn from a random raid members. As we found out last night, the Raging Spirits will 1 shot any non-tank that they spawn from.

From the time the raging spirits begin spawning, there is about 3 seconds before they 1-shot their first victim. This is our window of opportunity to ensure that a lovely Raging Spirit is handled and moved away from the raid.

When a raging spirit spawns, we need to make sure the tank has aggro on the Raging ASAP. This can be addresses easily by the tank having a macro to target the raging spirit and casting taunt.

Another option, which should be done in addition to the one just mentioned, is to have Hunters MD to a tank and have a Rogue use Tricks of the Trade. This should be done with a macro as well, to target to OT, cast MD/TotT, attack. By doing this, the hunter and rogue job should be reduced to spamming the macro and ensure a safe trip through the transition phase.

Since our raid has 1 hunter and 1 rogue, this should be EZ mode if they rotate on each raging to ensure it is always up for 1 person.

Once the Raging Spirit is on the OT, he must be faced away from the raid as he has a cone dmg spell that hurts a lot.

I believe that we can maintain our 3 group setup as long as we can pick up the ragings using the methods mentioned above.

Matthew

A few tidbits from elitistjerks and some additional reading. From what I can gather, the onus of this fight is on the tanks and positioning of adds first and foremost. 2nd is the order which the DPS kills things, and a distant third the speed which with we kill (less important than anything in all the posts I have read...seems like we overgear the encounter somewhat). Healing seemed adequate for as far as we got, but I would like to hear from Luke regarding his perception of the effectiveness of holy vs disc thus far.

Quote :

Having a raging spirit alive when the Valkyr come in P2 isn't really an issue. Just switch to the valks and switch back after. In P3 it is even less of an issue. We had 1 and a half spirits in phase 3 and you can just leave melee on it whilst ranged take care of the Vile Spirits. We found the best use of Bloodlust was during the 2>3 transition to stay on top of the Raging spirits. As for moving them we simply had the OT arc slightly to one side so he could move them around like that without hitting anyone. The fight is just about control. So long as your DPS on the Valkyr's/Vile Spirit's is enough to not have people die to them, you can take your time on LK.

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If the Valkyr do select the closest players to the edge, all you need to do to prevent that is to not be one of the three farthest from the center (or the farthest in 10). I can't say that I've confirmed this behavior though.
It doesn't matter if you're 2nd on threat, you can still be picked up. In fact, they check a few seconds before they grab you, so if you taunt the boss at the wrong time your MT is a valid target, similar to the ice tombs on Sindragosa.

Defile seems to get additional growth spurts from EACH player in the poo while it is growing...the one attempt half of us were down and fyre was in it, she exited quickly and it didn't appear to grow. The OTHER time, about 5-7 of us were in it and either lagged or got a bad tick...the time it swallowed most of the center.

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We also had an issue where our disc priest wasn't able to survive in the Frostmourne room, since he's got nothing to interrupt the Spirit Warden's Soul Rip. He tried healing the first time and dpsing the 2nd time, with no success on either occasion. A resto druid in another group has the same issue. Is it really not possible for Terenas to win if you don't have an interrupt? The tankspot video mentioned being able to Dispel the cast rather than interupting it and the spell ID certainly backs that up( Soul Rip - Spell - World of Warcraft ), so the Priest should be fine. As for the Druid he'll likely just have to shift to cat form after making sure his hots are rolling in order to interrupt the cast.

Regarding dispels and cleansings...take a read on this:

Quote :

We had such a bad string of resists that we stopped using our priest as the dispeller at all on LK. (Yes, we checked the log to make sure it was actually failure on casts.) She is a draenei, so I assume that isn't it. If it is using any standard resist mechanic, it would likely use the PVP resist levels, which would require 4% to not miss. It would be interesting if the hit reduction talents actually were counterproductive as well, (Things such as chances for "own" buffs to be dispelled and passive hit mechanics like the Blood Elf resist racial.) If it did use the 4% PVP base, and you were a draenei or with one, you'd expect a 3% miss rate, this would jive with the anecdote above of likely getting one on average per Rotface kill, and with some having never noticed them at all.

Being that tanks routinely run low, but 4%+ hit, has any pally tank ever gotten a dispel resist in their tanking gear?

EDIT: Yes, I realize both of the 'Blue' posts say its because of the boss level being higher than you. Ny experience and other anecdotes don't seem to show anything near the expected miss levels due to this.

Science of tanking:

Quote :

Your best bet is to use CD's. Protection Paladins are preferred by a lot of guilds due to Ardent Defender (no ICD on the damage reduction and yes, you will almost always proc it with soul reaper). We used a Feral Druid and Protection Warrior for our kill. You basically need to plan out a solid CD rotation and incorporate a tank switch when one tank has gone through their CD's and the reliable external CD's (Pain Suppression; Sacrifice isn't really reliable enough on its own, and generally needs to be paired with something else, like a GS). Then that other tank goes through their CD's and by then, the first tank should have something back up. This obviously gets increasingly complicated depending on what types of tanks you're using, but the fight is doable with any combination, just easier with some than others.
The key here is realizing that your tanks CAN and probably WILL die until they get some more gear. Look through any high end parse for a kill and you'll see that in almost all of them, there were tank deaths. At least one. Just be ready to Soulstone and Rebirth them when this happens and make sure both your tanks are #1 and #2 on the threat list.

Edit: IF you're out of CD's or are running into some kind of issue, your tanks can ping pong him if need be as a last resort. I don't recommend 3 tanks for most guilds, unless your DPS are really good. Most people will have DPS issues and probably will face some kind of death or two in the fight. If you're still contending with Val'kyr phases, you need to have the expectation that you might lose at least one of your DPS in a mishap at some point. This obviously is less of a consideration the better your DPS and players are in general, and having three tanks does give you a lot more room to work with in terms of this.

Everyone update your damn addons. I was guilty of this at problem start, when every buff/debuff was giving me LUA errors. No one should have to call out who has the plague, although it worked for situational awareness the drunker we all got...dbm puts out an audible warning. Thanks Brundon for directing me back to the right file updates for SCT (SCTD).

Required reading...while JJ gave an excellent description of the fight via vent...I know how hard audio learning can be for visual learners. Probably the best description I have found:

http://www.guildclique.com/2010/02/15/the-definitive-lich-king-guide-10-man/

Please use the phase numbers mentioned in this article for discussion/calls during the raid. Will alleviate confusion.
I think we are owning phase 1--fight dynamics are set and known to all.
Think we are working through phase 2 with minor hiccups.
Impressed we got to phase 3 last night...now we need to work on that. Perhaps the hardest phase from what I have read.
Phase 2-2, minor hiccups when we get there.
Phase 4. The BIG pain. Looks like it is all about the preplanning and positioning. Good luck.

Hope some of this helps to visualize the problem and make this run more successful.

J

To the healers inside the frostmourne statement...if you can't interrupt the painful cast from the add you CAN dispel it's effect...a lot of healers miss this tidbit. As for the add phases been reading a lot of folks just don't bother spreading to 3 groups and letting RNG take it's toll for the lightning, most folks say it a non player just stay away from the OT if he still has a plague bearer near him and everyone else focus down the raging spirits. The second transitional phase will also have FOUR spirits vs 3 hence the popping of BL during that transition (likely after the second one has popped).

Yes defile sucks and the more folks in it the more it sucks...however like I said last night you will have 1.5 seconds to MOVE away from other raiders (confirmed today matt it's not a random place in the middle it IS targetted to a player least that's what everything i have read/watched has stated) meaning we have a small amount of time to not screw our selves.

We'll reform and try new methods on phase 2/transition phase on tuesday, and Macro's will be next on my list hehe.
JJ

I notice I didn't make the line up, this is BS!

I'll be happy if we make it through phase 3 and get some facetime with phase 4 tonight...hope we resolved some of the aggro issues from last time. Fade only works every 30s.



J

that's an easy fix...it's people dropping plague in FRONT of cleaving bastards that hurts...and adds not getting picked up fast enough...orbs blowing up and throwing me to dalaran...you know little things

There is also a slightly different positioning for phase one that makes lots of stupid sense for the P1 > P2 transition. Ill talk about that tonight. Every little bit to make that easier will be good.

Also, my son doesn't have a tee-ball game tonight. So i will be on-time. This week its on Thursday, lol.

awesome, so if everyone is on at 8PM we'll plan on VoA if available then straight to ICC, the main weekly will be after the raid.
JJ