World of Warcraft™

So we 3 heal it with a druid/shaman on ranged and myself on the Beartank and the melee. Sadly we also do this with 4 melee DPS and a tank (So 5 melee total).

I'm having some issues keeping up the tank on the last couple bounces due to RNG *Melee swings, giant 100k+blasts and the ball AoE*. Any tips from those who have tried? Are you having your other two healers assist with healing the melee? Do you cleanse the debuff or do you heal through it? Any help is lovely.

Does anyone suffer doing this fight with minimal DPS? If so, what's your strat?

Swap it. Make sure you go into ranged and give them tank duties as well; the main idea being the fact that Bacon of Light will reach the tank (ideally) from the ranged group. So long as you're using enough Bacon transfer spells (Div, LoD, WoG) to make it worth it.

Don't count the tank as part of 'the melee', simply because he shouldn't be actually a part of them. Make sure he/she is far enough back that the ball isn't doing extra damage to them, as depending on bounces, tank damage can jump steeply. They should be using cooldowns for the end of the cycle, or ask for HoSac.

Cleanse the debuff on 10 man, you can heal through it if you want but it's really not worth it. Devoting a Div light or two to each tick is too much, especially if you're already having trouble with tank damage with everything else.

You're going to struggle with less range (more so on bounces, black phase can be handled pretty well even with 4 melee), so try keep it below 7 and cooldown it hard. On the 4th black phase, you can sit under the claw and tunnel the boss, you'll be close to enrage by then.

Thank you for the tips. Now by healing the ranged, do you mean HR the ranged from the melee position or while stacking on the range? Healing the melee allows me to get some regen back since I can melee and I'll be strapped for mana on that fight it seems. (We have had a few attempts so I can't put too much judgement on it).

I'd stay with the ranged, because you can still reach melee from range (and the tank should be JUST out of heal range when you're out at range, but that's where Bacon comes into play). Or you can still be in range of the tank in the ranged group, but your bounces will be super fast (5s) and that can risk deaths with off dispells etc.

On your first kill you'll be strapped a bit for mana. Depending on your black phase strat, you can always find time to Cpot or DP with no loss. Try and max your cooldowns and use weaker spells to make up for it. If you Guardian on the first set of bounces, you'll have it up again for the last part of the fight where even with Holy Light spam can be effective enough. DF on first/third black phases with Tides during/after will help significantly.

The biggest problem for 10 man is the burst at 6-7 stacks while 1-2 members are out to be dispelled.

The solution is to not dispel a group until right after ball hit that group. That way you will significantly lower your damage spikes, as well as reduce your overall damage taken during that phase.

Also, even if you have healers in both melee and ranged groups, all healers should be concentrating on the group that's about to be hit by ball to minimize spike deaths.

Well due to DPS being an issue, we don't have any phases with no damage going out. He's going back to norm while we're still burning the adds it seems. I'm pretty sure we're actually standing too close since I can heal the whole raid while stacking with the melee and the ball is hitting at about 5s. Does it make that much of a difference DPS-wise by increasing it to 7s? I can keep the melee up with easy on that bounce phase, but it's keeping the tank up in-between. Should I just focus on the tank and spot heal while the other two healers handle melee and ranged?

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-dxh6i56zg57lvctp/sum/healingDone/?enc=bosses&boss=55308


For those of you interested in checking logs, this is how we are doing. Any tips from this would be beneficial. This is an overall view on the attempts we made on him the other night as heals.

You can do 5s bounces, but it can be awkward with dispell timings, and that's really all the bounce phase has to it.

Remember you can do the last bounce of each phase with your Cauterize (or two, as you have).

Ranged (1) -> Melee (2) -> Ranged (3) -> Melee (4) [you can have the range run in with the ball for this one. It means they'll get hit twice in a row but the damage will be significantly less and they shouldn't die as they second of the two hits is with the melee stack] -> Mage1 (5) -> Melee (6) [which should now have everyone except the mages] -> Mage2 (7) -> Boss. That's minimal damage and shouldn't result in a lot of deaths, as the more dangerous bounces (5/6/7) are either getting cheesed (5 and 7) or being soaked by a large group (6).

Also, you can always push 1 or 3 bounces and let it hit to practice black phase timings. You should only get 3 black phases where adds have to die, on the 4th with 7 bounces you'll be able to stack under the claw and heal through it as enrage will be creeping up. And don't be discouraged if there are 2/3 adds left when the black phase ends. The Claw will get cleaved by your rogue, and the Eye out in Africa will die eventually.

02/22/2012 10:21 PMPosted by Zarriea

and the Eye out in Africa will die eventually.

Seriously, what is it doing all the way over there?! So annoying :(

4 melee sounds absolutely awful for this fight, I wouldn't even want to do it with 3. It's going to take forever to get the the adds down in black phases and you probably won't have very many people back in time to soak. I don't know exactly how you're assigning adds during the black phase, but make sure you aren't doing something like assigning your melee to kill that one eye that's way the hell out there on the complete opposite side of the room from the claw.

As for the damage towards the end of your bounces, he's going to hit very hard there, that's not really RNG. If you're doing 7 or more bounces, make sure your tank has a cooldown (whether it's his or a hand of sac or whatever) for the second psychic drain. That psychic drain plus the huge melee hits can very easily kill your tank if healers aren't ready for it. You definitely want to make sure at least 2 healers can reach the tank during that last little bit before black phase. You might want to consider having a mage bounce the last one by himself so your other healers can move up and be in range of the tank. Maybe they could even do the last 2 depending on when exactly the tank damage starts getting difficult.

We already do the cauterizing method which drains our mages pretty damn low, just in time to be hit with the debuff it seems. What do you do for those RNG moments when transitioning into black phase and he tosses up a few of the debuffs? Just heal through it or make those people wait outside and eat AoE for a bit longer to cleanse them?

The ranged stacking on the melee for the last two sounds brilliant, actually.

Sadly we had to pug that mage which is why we did that method. We've been having to deal with a few puggers each week on 10m so it makes continuity difficult. Having more people absorb the ball = less damage each person takes, yes?

@Drimza

We assign it so the melee barely have to move and the ranged have to pick up the Eye of Africa. The timing of psychic drain + melee for those last couple bounces makes it rather difficult.

02/22/2012 10:35 PMPosted by Hombello

What do you do for those RNG moments when transitioning into black phase and he tosses up a few of the debuffs? Just heal through it or make those people wait outside and eat AoE for a bit longer to cleanse them?

Again, that's not RNG. Disrupting Shadows is on a timer. It sounds like you're doing 7 bounces, in which case you will typically get 3 sets of disrupting shadows (sometimes only 2 if you're bouncing the ball very quickly, but plan for 3). If the debuffs going into black phase are giving you too much of a problem, then you might need to change your number of bounces, maybe drop down to 5, at least until you get the hang of black phase.

We were attempting 7 at the start but there was too much going on to start learning the fight so we bumped it down to 5 which seemed to get us into black phase more often with everyone being healed up.

We haven't killed this yet, but we've got the bouncy ball phase down cold. Went to 9 by accident once. Wouldn't do that again (I think some lucky dodges were all that let us live) but 7 was pretty cleanly healable.

We actually use 2 healers (disc and paladin) in the melee group and one in the ranged. We cross-heal a good bit, but having two stationary healers in easy range of the tank seems to make it pretty trivial to mitigate the spikes.

The paladin and I also sort of stagger our move-out after the last bounce (he goes as soon as the ball hits us, I stay and spam for a sec until I see him in place).

I don't know how we'd do it with 4 melee, though. We've got 2, which seems perfect. Although from your logs, I only see 3 plus the tank...that's not impossible, you could still throw another healer in the melee group, especially since you're not having to work with PoH.

(You guys must love Vanquisher tokens almost as much as we love Conqueror...wow.)

Save your sh!t, small range cooldowns (like Spirit Link zzz) for bad RNG with dispels and ball hits.

If you get debuffs as black phase is starting, dispel them quickly and be over with it. Be sure to have some kind of healing/damage reduction cooldown up for each phase. 1st/3rd black you can Tranq. Can use AM/Spirit Link for bad debuffs. 2nd black you can (hopefully) use Feral 4pc.

edit: With 7 bounces, you don't want to get more than two sets of debuffs. The first bounce phase timing is different. You get 1 after the 3rd bounce (I think) and one between bounces 6-7-boss. On each following phase, you get debuffs straight up with bounce 1 and then get another at around 5-6.
^ is also with 6s/7s bounce timers.

edit: With 7 bounces, you don't want to get more than two sets of debuffs. The first bounce phase timing is different. You get 1 after the 3rd bounce (I think) and one between bounces 6-7-boss. On each following phase, you get debuffs straight up with bounce 1 and then get another at around 5-6.
^ is also with 6s/7s bounce timers.

Ah that's it, ok yeah I was looking back through some videos and seeing debuffs go out at different times so I thought maybe there was actually some RNG involved with the timing. And for some reason I was counting the bounce 1 debuff in the first bounce phase, but yeah that doesn't happen.

Ignore me, my brain hurts too much tonight

So what I'm understanding is: 7 bounces should be do'able. Dispel the debuff asap unless the ball is about to land on the specific targets. use Feral 4pc for 2nd black phase, AM/Spirit Link for 1st/3rd.

Tranq on both? There's enough time to get another tranq by our resto druid for the 3rd phase? Or are you talking about tranq from another druid?

So what I'm understanding is: 7 bounces should be do'able. Dispel the debuff asap unless the ball is about to land on the specific targets. use Feral 4pc for 2nd black phase, AM/Spirit Link for 1st/3rd.

Tranq on both? There's enough time to get another tranq by our resto druid for the 3rd phase? Or are you talking about tranq from another druid?

With 7 bounces, it should be around 3 minutes between the 1st black phase and the 3rd black phase. I was suggesting saving Spirit Link/AM for bad RNG with dispells (Ie, 2 or 3 targets with the debuff). If not, use AM on a Black phase where needed. SLT is kind of bad for anything except bad RNG with dispels because Black Phase is so spread out, generally.

I think he was saying resto tranq on 1 and 3, bear 4pc on 2 (and 4 if you get a 4th), and just use aura mastery/SLT during bouncing if you get bad debuffs.

If you do 7 bounces in the 2nd and 3rd bouncing phases, tranq will be back up for the 3rd black phase. If you do less, it might be a few seconds in until it's up. My group does 7/7/7/5 with me tranqing 2 and 4, and on the 4th one it's usually about 10 seconds away from being up when black phase starts.