4 heal fight before the nerf, should be 3 healable now. Hearing all sorts of recommendations on head kill order.
Choray posted:
We're having serious trouble with Megaera 10, fielding 4 healers isn't really an option for us so we're trying to get by with 3, but it's rough. We can usually get through the rampages, though; what kills us eventually is the constant barrage of poison bombs because the officers insist on just alternating venom/fire and never killing frost, so all it takes is one too many bombs in a row and we start losing people. Am I right in suggesting that we kill the frost head for the 5th head rather than yet another venom? As I see it, that would significantly lower the chances of getting too many bombs in a row, at the cost of just two, eventually one frost head in the back at the end of the fight. The beam is annoying and all but as far as I can see we need to do something to make this easier on our healers.We actually found on 10 man (3 healing: Druid, Paladin, Shaman (who is normally enhancement so somewhat weak gear)) that the concealed green head was the worst head. The green head requires the raid to constantly move and take a lot of damage. Back-to-back acid rains will really do a number on your raid. In contrast, the blue head really only causes one player to take damage. (Red is, of course, the easiest to deal with.)
Thus, our order was: blue, red, green, red, blue, green, any(blue).
We used a few tricks to keep things (nearly) manageable. We had two raid markers that were each in-between 2 of the bosses that we would stack on during Rampages (a raid mark and the bosses make a rough equilateral triangle.) In between those raid markers was a warlock gateway to the back of the room. Post-rampage, melee would be in melee range (generally in the peninsulas in-between the bosses). Healers stayed roughly around the gate and marks (to get range on everywhere) and ranged DPS would be in the back at near max-DPS range (to avoid placing too many icy grounds near healers).
People with cinders would focus on keeping a circular area around the gate clear so healers could stay in range (as well as ensure we could stack on rampages). DPS who get cinders would use movement speed boosts and damage reduction cooldowns in order to quickly and safely clear ice (Healers would try to get rid of it ASAP). Healers would handle the icy beam by running to the other gate and then immediately porting back.
That being said, the last head was a complete mess; however, we used bloodlust on it so it died very quickly.Firebert posted:
You need to swap after breaths, preferably after 2 breaths unless your dps is good enough to prevent a third.I strongly disagree with this advice. We would only have our tanks swap in-between heads and that seemed to work much better for us (3 healing). While, yes, they will slowly take more damage from the breaths (and you need to get done before the fifth ice breath), this avoided issues with failed switches (leading to breaths on the raid) and excessive tank spiking (where one tank takes melees from both bosses). It also lets healers settle into their assigned tank heals better. With our DPS, we would usually get around 2-3 breaths (depending on DPS cooldown status) and rarely 4.
Edit:
Sindai posted:
....If there was some way to eliminate an entire line of frost without running through the whole thing with the red debuff ticking the whole time it would be a reasonable fight.....Just noticed this post. Specifically, our best people to handle this were our DK DPS with Death's Advance and AMS and our Balance Druid with engineering boots/dash/stampeding roar and warlock symbiosis/other damage reduction CDs (the druid also brings a bonus HotW boosted Tranquility!).
Megaera kicked our shit in tonight. I was expecting an easy kill. We tried 3 healing, 4 healing, RGRGBRG combo, and the above mentioned BRGRBGR combo but whatever we did people were dying left and right, or the tanks were dying. We even executed tricky Red to Green tank swaps flawlessly at 2 stacks with no issue.
I'm not really even sure what to do, as a tank I feel like I can't help the rest of the raid at all. Our DPS is too low to push 3 breaths when we 4 heal, and occasionally we get a 4th breath while 3 healing as well.
We also 3 healed Mageara, going for RGRGRGR, never going for ice. I had to come up with a defensive cd rotation and healing assignments - something I haven't done since cataclysm heroics. Basically you want to chain at least one defensive cooldown and a healing cooldown together on rampages, and have one coming off-cooldown on the last head. Here's my macro:
1st Barrage Aura Mastery | 2nd Barrage Aura Mastery + Ascendance | 3rd Barrage Spirit Link Totem + Divine Hymn | 4th Barrage Aura Mastery + Healing Tide | 5th Barrage Aura Mastery + Ascendance | 6th Barrage Spirit Link Totem, Smoke + Guardian of Ancient Kings, Divine Hymn; with my healing tide coming off cd in around 30 seconds.
We had 2 paladins, a rogue and SLT for damage reduction, and had healing tide, ascendance, divine hymn and GoAK for healing cooldowns. I am assuming a druid with tranq + Incarnation can handle 2 of the healing CD's as well, but monks are utterly boned with revival being somewhat shit and paladin healing cd's are somewhat lacking. Disc can contribute with barrier and SS, but we had our priest go holy for aoe heals thru the fight with me on a tank and the paladin on the other.
For those having trouble with Megaera, what worked really well for us was simply never killing the Green head.
Ranged need to be standing at close to max range, and run blue beams directly away from the boss. You're not going to be taking any other damage at all the entire fight outside of Rampage using this strategy, and this ensures blue beams will never interfere with other players.
Red can just be dropped anywhere that is safe.
Ignoring Green means that the raid won't be taking any damage outside of Rampage and people being targetted with Cinders. It makes the fight much easier to heal and is just one less mechanic to deal with. Rampage damage felt similar to killing all 3 heads evenly. I suspect this is because the damage is coming from the 3 main heads rather than the ones in the back, while the ones in the back affect how often the boss casts Cinders, Frost Beam, or Poison Bomb. So even if you only kill Blue/Red, two heads doing slightly more extra damage ends up being the same as if all three were doing slightly less extra damage.
There is also no need to tank swap on this fight except right after a Rampage. All a tank swap does is increase the risk of triggering Megaera's Rage and wiping the raid, or getting a breath turned on the raid. The breath debuffs only last 45 seconds so simply changing the color head you are tanking after a Rampage is enough to let it drop off.
WoL tip if you want to see what order a guild used, toss this into the Expression Editor:
type = TYPE_DEATH
and (targetName = "Flaming Head" or targetName = "Venomous Head" or targetName = "Frozen Head")
It'll spit out the order that the heads died:[17:46:48.613] Frozen Head dies
[17:48:12.352] Flaming Head dies
[17:49:32.554] Frozen Head dies
[17:50:57.263] Flaming Head dies
[17:52:24.011] Frozen Head dies
[17:53:56.272] Flaming Head dies
[17:55:20.704] Frozen Head dies
[17:55:20.704] Venomous Head diesSo there's a guild that did as G.I. Jaw suggested and didn't kill green at all (it dies at the end since the boss is dead).
Megaera has changed a LOT from the PTR! I thought the differences in LFR last night were just for LFR, but it's very different for Normal too! Seems better this way though.
Looks like there are a lot of different opinions on how to handle this. Some groups never kill a type of head. Others only kill a type once. Others do a full rotation every time. Obviously don't know what will work best for us. Sounds like it depends how well the raid can handle the different abilities.
Frost means you have to be good at kiting the beams and thus healing/DPS on the move.
Fire means get away from everyone and get dispelled.
Venom means dodge falling acid.
If we are particularly bad at any of those, we can leave those heads alone. We'll find out when we get there! (Soon right?)
For Science!
So what is our strat going to be for this? I vote for Venom, Red, Venom, Blue, Red, Venom, Red. This will minimize the running from the frost kite, reduce tank damage due to lots of tanking of blue. We would just clear the blue stacks once at the 4th kill. Vox did this and it seems sound to me.
GRGBRGR, huh? I don't think I've seen that one yet. Proves that just about anything could work! I don't have a preference. I do think we should kill each head at least once, which your order does.
I'm fine with Rada's suggestion.
For Science!
I just don't think the killing green so much is a great option for us. That and the cinders combine for the most raid damage and get pretty much unmanagable. I think we should kill blue more often as we can kite the frost beam pretty damn easily. It will also help with the cinder pools as we can kite the frost beam through them and get rid of them. I vote to highly reduce the green head killing. A couple of videos I watched all limited their killing of the green head. We have to run from the incoming green bombs anyway but at least the beam wont hit everyone.
Sure, we can try a different order. I've seen many people say that the order we're using didn't work for them, but a different one did. I've also seen many people say Blue was terrible. Clearly, different orders appeal to different group strengths.
Blue does the least tank damage if left alive, while Red does the most. Green is in the middle. Actually, Red does the most tank damage if killed too. Stupid Fire head.
Blue does the least raid damage IF people kite it. If we get hit with the Blue Beam, you die fast. 140k damage per second. It's easy to avoid. The main danger of the Blue Beam is that it can quickly cover the area in ice patches. If we kill Blue heads, we need to be good about clearing the frost out with the fire dot. If we do well at that, then Blue may be fairly benign. Red sucks no matter what.
Green doesn't seem particularly deadly to the raid, but it seems to be the biggest source of "healer attrition." So if healers don't have to worry about much green damage, the tank and fire dot damage should be more controllable.
I was gonna type something longer, but figured it was a waste. ;) Anyway! Let's try killing Green less and see how it goes. It might work well! It might fail horribly. Best way to know is to try it. Actually, I'm annoyed with myself. When our attempts last night were going badly, I should have had us try a different kill order. We still may have failed, but at least we would have more experience with the Blue head. The current order was almost working the first night, which is why we tried it again. We'll shift it up next time and see how it falls out.
For Science!
Yes, lets try a few pulls each of some of the suggested tactics to get a sense of the damage patterns and how much kiting will affect our DPS.
BRBRBRB was one suggestion, it increases kiting but may prove more manageable overall. We'd have to learn to kite the Torrent of Ice over cinder puddles and how to thaw Icy Ground. Blue head earlier is another good one to try, it may work better as it is closer to what we've been learning.
We need to eliminate avoidable damage, too. Ignite Flesh and Rot Armor shouldn't raid members. Acid Rain damage could be lower, it looks like we could push that down at the expense of DPS, we'll have to balance that against trying to avoid a third breath on the tanks.
For Cinder dispels I'd like to split the raid into three camps. Melee should leave room on the end of the little fingers of land to drop off Cinders. A short ranged group of mostly healers should drop Cinders behind them and a max range group can be dispelled immediately, anticipating that they're already running out of the puddle. We'll assign separate dispels for melee and ranged allowing them to focus on when the respective players are in the correct position. Healers can dispel themselves, they'll know best when they're in the correct position. This might not leave cinders in the best place for Torrent of Ice kiting but should reduce the amount of running around with Cinders.
Thursday was a good experiment with the Frozen Blue Beam, even just a few pulls. A single Frost Beam didn't seem much trouble, but two (after four heads died) got pretty crazy. There was a lot of running around at that point. Had some points where two healers were kiting beams, which I think contributed to deaths. (Correct me if I'm wrong!) After thinking about a lot of different possibilities, here's what I've come up with:
GRB RGR B
The last head doesn't matter, since it's ability never activates. I picked Blue just cuz. Lot of reasons behind this order, so get ready! ;) As I already said, it seems that killing two Blue heads gets crazy, but just one Blue head is easy. Killing the one Blue head early on means dealing with the Green/Red abilities less. But killing it as the first one means that the Frenzy buff will stack on it very high by the end of the fight. Four stacks (80%) during the seventh head. By killing Blue third, the Frenzy buff will only stack to two (40%). With this order, the Red head never gets a Frenzy stack and the Green head gets a two-stack once during the fight. That should help keep tank damage down.
I did consider killing Blue for the sixth head (so two of each) but I think Red works out better. That way, during the final crazy head, the tanks don't have to deal with the fire dot. Tanking Green and Blue should be much easier to heal than Red and Green with all the crazy that will be going on at that point.
This order does mean there will be one Green head throwing Acid Bombs for the whole fight. While not ideal, it's hopefully better than dealing with two Blue beams at once or a really hard hitting Blue head. The second Green head kill is very late in the fight. So there will only be 2x Acid Bombs for the final two heads. That should be more manageable than earlier in the fight. We'll use Heroism on the sixth head so it dies fast and then any remaining DPS cooldowns on the seventh one. (For example, I'll save my second Stampede for that final head.)
No matter what order we do, the first three heads are pretty easy and the final two are just crazy. My hope with this order is to smooth out the fourth and fifth heads so healers have more cooldowns/mana/etc for the final two heads. The tradeoff is there will be a lot of Fire debuffs going out once the fourth head dies. And it'll just be CRAZY after the sixth head dies. Tank healing should be light though so it may balance out.
That's my suggestion. What do you think?
(One other option is the "no green" suggestion. Just go BRBRBR. That does give the same amount of fire dots at the end, but with lots of frost beams to kite, yet with no green AoE damage. The Green head would hit REALLY hard by the end too. So lots of dots, lots of kiting, hard hitting tank damage and no AoE damage. My version is moderate AoE, lots of dots, little kiting and minor tank damage.)
For Science!
I really like the GRB RGR B.
As much as I liked not having to deal with the green bombs, the ice beams just became too much. I'm not sure if it's because people weren't paying attention to where the blue spots were, or if they were too close to the front, but we would often block people in areas of ice. Limiting the amount of ice is a good idea.
Sounds good!
If we feel stuck on this I'd like to break it up and try 2-3 pulls with BRBRBGr paying particular attention to clearing out ice with Cinders so we don't have to be dodging the Zamboni out there. Tank damage on G will get out of hand though.
I'd like to do something like the following positioning:
Melee dropping off up on the tips of the little fingers of land, healers further back from the marks and ranged DPS at max range. I was too close on some of the previous attempts, I think all of ranged can move back a bit, spreading things out to give us more room to drop stuff.