We'll have Ko'ragh down this week and will be slamming our nuts into the Impregnator, who will have us all wanting to return to the gentle warm embrace of Expel Magic.
http://www.wowhead.com/guide=2798/imperator-margok-highmaul-raid-strateg...
http://www.icy-veins.com/wow/imperator-mar-gok-strategy-guide-normal-heroic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q8Vsjcb_Ko
There's a reason the Fatboss video is twice as long as most of their others, this fight has more moving parts than just about any fight in the game, I'm still trying to wrap my head around everything. Not only are there phases to the fight, there are 'intermissions' to mark each new phase.
Though I've been carried once as heals and put in another good handful of serious attempts as DPS I still don't have a clue about all the mechanics. Be ready to bring your A game, your target switching plenty of movement debuff watching cooldown burning add picking up skills. Most importantly, check you ego at the door and bring some patience because Impregnator Margaret is going to make all of us miserable.
To recap Thursday's attempts, TL;DR version (revisions welcome!):
PHASE 1 ==
If you get branded, run away from the raid until it expires
Don't stand in destructive resonance (or anything else)
Kill adds before boss
Run into the nova
Tank swap (yawn)
PHASE 2 ==
Same as above, but avoid bad stuff more :)
INTERLUDE 1 ==
Warmages > anomalies
Keep anomalies away from warmages
PHASE 3 ==
Everything same as before but worse
Tanks will get rooted before mark of chaos so newTank will move boss away from oldTank
INTERLUDE 2 ==
Same as before, except with more and more buffed adds. Oh, and a tank swap required
PHASE 4 ==
The now branded debuf jumps to two people not one
Anomalies create smaller adds when they blow up
Avoid orbs, novas, and standing near your friends
Think positive thoughts for your healers -- this phase looks to be toughest for them
For the most part, that's pretty succinct. The biggest thing you are missing is the "brand" debuff in Phase 2. In Phase 2, when debuffed you can't move more than 10 yards from your spot or you get ported back. A low, glowy ring will surround you to show you where you can/can't move. Run to the edge of that towards the back (if ranged) or ranged (if melee) to pass the debuff on.
I like the idea of burning Heroism in the second Intermission to get rid of the ogre adds quickly so we can cleanly start the final, crazy phase.
For Science!
I did a little research on the question about where to tank the big add during the second intermission. I watched a livestream of Nihilum (tanked by Treckie) doing a heroic run to gear up alts. They tanked the big add right at the door. I also tried it out on LFR and it worked. If we are confident that we can kill him promptly, this will give us a few more seconds of up-time. If we don't get him down before the first kick to the face, then it could be a disaster, as the second tank must tank the small adds in the middle of the room.
One thing that will help me is if we could use a raid pillar to mark where Aanvil will move to blow up. I get turned around on this fight and loose track of where to avoid.
Let's test it out next time we are in the room, but I believe that if you are in the center circle, you should be safe.
I'll be waiting at the door hoping to not get kicked in the face.
One thing that was done on the times i've killed him was the ranged and healers would stack for mine placement. We would stack and step to the left in a clockwise pattern keeping the mines tightly grouped in that area and not in middle of room. When the adds come we would move to center for killing adds and then reset to original stack point when adds die. The tanks would use the other side of the room from our stack point to blow up. This makes the fight really easy especially heroic mode.
2nd this, though the group I killed him with used different positioning and generally moved counterclockwise from the stack point (moving right leaving room for tanks on the left).
I was pretty much a tourist and didn't have a good grasp on mechanics at the time and was in an unfamiliar role (healing is second nature for me while DPS is still a little strange, especially the lvl 100 changes) so I didn't grasp why things were done as they were. Our group was larger and included 2 hunters to ferry Branded out at the appropriate time.
Stacking brings its own disadvantages (mine interrupts everyone) but makes so many other mechanics easier, Healing Rain, close range Monk stuff and even Holy Nova (lol) work for healers, the Branded debuff gets carried off at the appropriate time, and there's no excuse when everyone is moving "lol I didn't see that mine". We'll still have to spread some for P4 Novas but executing correctly will leave our healers with some mana to make minor mistakes irrelevant.
Hunters aren't the only one to deal with Branded, they're just the most convenient due to the Disengage / Deterrence combo. Any of us can haul it out and burn a cooldown if the stacks are too high. I completely failed at this last night, getting confused by Pewsey's lovely Australian accent counting down to the add? instead of my debuff.
As Aanvil points out, there's a ton we can all do to reduce damage throughout the fight.
Please review the logs, which show that we are taking a lot of excess damage on almost every mechanic in the fight.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/tbnVz73fdcxgMp2Q#view=execution
I looked more closely at the force nova issue. Everyone I looked at did great on the first set of force novas. Everyone did terribly with the second set of force novas. We consistently had issues across all three attempts. Examples below.
Sanz: 3K, 2.7K, 3K... 6.4K, 4.4K, 4.2K... (no damage; dead or bubbled?)
Muta: 3.4K, 3K, 3.4K... 4.5K, 6.3K, 8K... 3.9K, 3K
People also need to use healing tonics more often.