We are doing well on Garrosh and are almost at a kill. I've been thinking about optimizations to push us over the edge.
For phase 1, I looked at a few different strats including the Icy Veins one and Method's, from the BlizzCon Live Raid. Both of them tank closer to the Throne, but I think we're better off as we are. Not really a lot of difference that I see between the two, except that our strat should make it easier to tag the Farseers with the Iron Star. We don't need to change anything here. (We MIGHT be able to use Heroism at the start of the boss fight and it might be up again by Phase 3, but it's not necessary. Actually, using Heroism makes it more likely that it won't be up in time!)
In Phase 2, one option is to completely ignore the Weapons, except for tossing some dots on them. Positioning in this phase is much less strict without the Stars. If we ignore the Weapons, our positions need to shift so that we drop the weapons as close to the walls as possible, to minimize their impact. New ones next to old ones and so on. This should increase DPS on Garrosh, but reduce the space we have for Phase 3. So maybe. I AM certain that once we hit that second heart phase and start getting the Empowered Whirls we need to ignore the Weapons. We really need to get into Phase 3 fast at that point, definitely before another Heart. Oh, also note that the tanks only need to take 3-4 stacks of Garrosh's Despair debuff. Not 8-10 as Icy Veins said.
Biggest element of the entire fight is those Empowered Whirls. During the "normal" Whirls, melee should stay in and DPS the boss. More DPS we have the better. Less time we spend in that "end of phase 2" part, the better. Shouldn't be a big deal to heal through the normal Whirls with 3 healers. For the Empowered ones, apparently 8 adds spawn. We are doing bad on those.
I think we're scattering too much. We do need to spread out so we don't get gibbed by the Whirl casts, but not as much as we are. Should stay closer together and watch our feet and move out of swirls. Then each DPS should grab a couple adds, pull them out a bit and kill them. Melee should help with this and even whichever tank is not currently on the boss. Alas, I haven't seen a lot of specific strategy on this. Mostly people say "DPS should taunt/root and kill them." Spreading out less during the Whirlwind should actually help with this. We should be able to even out the adds so each person has 1-2 instead of someone with 3-4.
For the final burn phase, there's really not much change. Pop Heroism, burn the boss. Don't bother with Weapons, but don't freak out. Mind Controls will still go out and we need to blow those up FAST or they'll wipe us. The MC is the scariest part of P3. Tank debuff shouldn't be a big deal and the Weapons aren't much either. If we break the MCs fast, we should have it. For the adds from the Whirls, it'll likely be best for one tank to grab them all and just kite them. No need to kill them or you'll just make them stronger. 8 unbuffed adds are weaker than 7 buffed ones. We shouldn't get more than a couple spawns of those in the last phase or we're dead anyway. The one tank on Garrosh will get hit hard with high stacks of the dot, but it should be doable.
Any other thoughts are, as always, most welcome! Get those Whirl adds under control and we'll have this.
We've made huge improvement on handling the adds that spawn during the Empowered Whirling Corruptions. Well done! At this point there are two things to master:
1) A little more DPS. We're just a bit behind here. Sometimes we get that extra add spawn at the end of phase 1, sometimes not. Definitely need to avoid that. Bit more damage on Garrosh at the start and less on that first add spawn should help. We've mentioned it before, but worth noting again. That first set dies fast and it only needs to hit 50%-ish. Also it helps the fight a lot if we avoid that third Heart/Shadow phase. We're pretty close we just need to push a bit harder, clean it up and get more DPS on Garrosh. So any tricks you can think of to help yourself would be great!
2) Mind Controls! Most of the time we do fine at these, but when we fail, we fail big. Despite what I just said about DPS on Garrosh, we've got to be on top of the MC casts or we die. We could do general interrupt assignments like this:
Ranged focus on Ranged first, Healers second.
Melee focus on Melee first, Healers second.
Healers focus on Melee first, Healers second.
There shouldn't be too much to heal when MCs go out, so at least one healer should be able to help interrupt. With this little priority, each MCd person should have two or more interrupters on them. The next trick is making sure we don't all burn our interrupts at the same time... Maybe healers always wait for a second cast to interrupt?
If I call out the name of an MC target, would everyone be more likely to focus on that one or less? If the raid is more likely to go after the one I call, I could focus on the other...assuming I'm not MCd. :) Whole thing might happen too fast for that though.
Any other thoughts on handling the MCs are welcome! We are VERY close, we can get this down tomorrow!
I really liked the how we were doing the Weapons last night. Seemed to be able to dps Garrosh a lot more, which was great. One thing that did annoy me is that we would all be stacked together, but someone had to be off by himself (close, but not stacked), and then the weapon would fall on him so there was more to run through. I know it's not too important, but just very annoying because there's no reason not to stand on top of us, there really isn't.
For the adds, are melee helping with those or staying in? I think those are the next things we need to focus on. We've got the Weapon and MC's mostly figured out, now if we can just get the adds we'll be set.
I'll just speak for myself. I have always been running out on the empowered whirlwind + adds. Last week I would just kill the closest add and then go back on Garrosh. Last night I switched that and just kept taunting and killing adds until I couldn't find anymore. Going back and dps'ing Garrosh isn't that great anyway as I'm just forced to run back out a few seconds later. As far as I know, standing in is not viable. Not only does the empowered whirlwind do too much dmg if you stay in, but the adds will spawn on you and splash dmg the tanks.
Is equipping a shield for a few seconds viable for ret?
Sorry all I just got a new router last night and JUST got it working right at raid time (or after) but it isn't still working great as my lag last night was yellow/red all night which I never got with the old router so still dealing with some major issues as it finally just booted me and wouldn't let me back on last night so that was why I didn't get back on! Sorry tremendously for that and hopefully can get this sorted out ASAP.
Some good attempts here, we were working through the phases pretty well.
We are doing well on Garrosh and are almost at a kill. I've been thinking about optimizations to push us over the edge.
For phase 1, I looked at a few different strats including the Icy Veins one and Method's, from the BlizzCon Live Raid. Both of them tank closer to the Throne, but I think we're better off as we are. Not really a lot of difference that I see between the two, except that our strat should make it easier to tag the Farseers with the Iron Star. We don't need to change anything here. (We MIGHT be able to use Heroism at the start of the boss fight and it might be up again by Phase 3, but it's not necessary. Actually, using Heroism makes it more likely that it won't be up in time!)
In Phase 2, one option is to completely ignore the Weapons, except for tossing some dots on them. Positioning in this phase is much less strict without the Stars. If we ignore the Weapons, our positions need to shift so that we drop the weapons as close to the walls as possible, to minimize their impact. New ones next to old ones and so on. This should increase DPS on Garrosh, but reduce the space we have for Phase 3. So maybe. I AM certain that once we hit that second heart phase and start getting the Empowered Whirls we need to ignore the Weapons. We really need to get into Phase 3 fast at that point, definitely before another Heart. Oh, also note that the tanks only need to take 3-4 stacks of Garrosh's Despair debuff. Not 8-10 as Icy Veins said.
Biggest element of the entire fight is those Empowered Whirls. During the "normal" Whirls, melee should stay in and DPS the boss. More DPS we have the better. Less time we spend in that "end of phase 2" part, the better. Shouldn't be a big deal to heal through the normal Whirls with 3 healers. For the Empowered ones, apparently 8 adds spawn. We are doing bad on those.
I think we're scattering too much. We do need to spread out so we don't get gibbed by the Whirl casts, but not as much as we are. Should stay closer together and watch our feet and move out of swirls. Then each DPS should grab a couple adds, pull them out a bit and kill them. Melee should help with this and even whichever tank is not currently on the boss. Alas, I haven't seen a lot of specific strategy on this. Mostly people say "DPS should taunt/root and kill them." Spreading out less during the Whirlwind should actually help with this. We should be able to even out the adds so each person has 1-2 instead of someone with 3-4.
For the final burn phase, there's really not much change. Pop Heroism, burn the boss. Don't bother with Weapons, but don't freak out. Mind Controls will still go out and we need to blow those up FAST or they'll wipe us. The MC is the scariest part of P3. Tank debuff shouldn't be a big deal and the Weapons aren't much either. If we break the MCs fast, we should have it. For the adds from the Whirls, it'll likely be best for one tank to grab them all and just kite them. No need to kill them or you'll just make them stronger. 8 unbuffed adds are weaker than 7 buffed ones. We shouldn't get more than a couple spawns of those in the last phase or we're dead anyway. The one tank on Garrosh will get hit hard with high stacks of the dot, but it should be doable.
Any other thoughts are, as always, most welcome! Get those Whirl adds under control and we'll have this.
For Science!
We've made huge improvement on handling the adds that spawn during the Empowered Whirling Corruptions. Well done! At this point there are two things to master:
1) A little more DPS. We're just a bit behind here. Sometimes we get that extra add spawn at the end of phase 1, sometimes not. Definitely need to avoid that. Bit more damage on Garrosh at the start and less on that first add spawn should help. We've mentioned it before, but worth noting again. That first set dies fast and it only needs to hit 50%-ish. Also it helps the fight a lot if we avoid that third Heart/Shadow phase. We're pretty close we just need to push a bit harder, clean it up and get more DPS on Garrosh. So any tricks you can think of to help yourself would be great!
2) Mind Controls! Most of the time we do fine at these, but when we fail, we fail big. Despite what I just said about DPS on Garrosh, we've got to be on top of the MC casts or we die. We could do general interrupt assignments like this:
Ranged focus on Ranged first, Healers second.
Melee focus on Melee first, Healers second.
Healers focus on Melee first, Healers second.
There shouldn't be too much to heal when MCs go out, so at least one healer should be able to help interrupt. With this little priority, each MCd person should have two or more interrupters on them. The next trick is making sure we don't all burn our interrupts at the same time... Maybe healers always wait for a second cast to interrupt?
If I call out the name of an MC target, would everyone be more likely to focus on that one or less? If the raid is more likely to go after the one I call, I could focus on the other...assuming I'm not MCd. :) Whole thing might happen too fast for that though.
Any other thoughts on handling the MCs are welcome! We are VERY close, we can get this down tomorrow!
For Science!
I really liked the how we were doing the Weapons last night. Seemed to be able to dps Garrosh a lot more, which was great. One thing that did annoy me is that we would all be stacked together, but someone had to be off by himself (close, but not stacked), and then the weapon would fall on him so there was more to run through. I know it's not too important, but just very annoying because there's no reason not to stand on top of us, there really isn't.
For the adds, are melee helping with those or staying in? I think those are the next things we need to focus on. We've got the Weapon and MC's mostly figured out, now if we can just get the adds we'll be set.
I'll just speak for myself. I have always been running out on the empowered whirlwind + adds. Last week I would just kill the closest add and then go back on Garrosh. Last night I switched that and just kept taunting and killing adds until I couldn't find anymore. Going back and dps'ing Garrosh isn't that great anyway as I'm just forced to run back out a few seconds later. As far as I know, standing in is not viable. Not only does the empowered whirlwind do too much dmg if you stay in, but the adds will spawn on you and splash dmg the tanks.
Is equipping a shield for a few seconds viable for ret?
Probably not. You lose the Ret 2-hand damage bonus. Some of your abilities might require a 2-hander, but I'm not sure of that.
For Science!
Sorry all I just got a new router last night and JUST got it working right at raid time (or after) but it isn't still working great as my lag last night was yellow/red all night which I never got with the old router so still dealing with some major issues as it finally just booted me and wouldn't let me back on last night so that was why I didn't get back on! Sorry tremendously for that and hopefully can get this sorted out ASAP.
Darkguns - Level 90 DK
Autogun - Retired Lock
Wilygun - Druid Extraordinaire
Shamgun - Shaman fun!