HoF - Empress

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mutagen
mutagen's picture
HoF - Empress

A little late on posting this one. Lots of moving parts in this fight but it should be slightly easier than Amber Shaper.

Fatboss: Grand Empress Gary

Phase 1: Lasts until 0 Sha Energy; alternates with Phase 2 until 30% health.
--Dissonance Field: Sort of like Collapsing Stars on Algalon, except they don't have the decency to be killable by regular damage; instead, they take damage whenever someone casts a spell, and explode when they run out of health. (Standing near one while it's alive will put you out of LOS of the rest of the raid.) So, to keep them from exploding simultaneously:
--Cry of Terror. Debuffs a player with a thing that deals 50k damage every 2 seconds to all players in line of sight. If you get this, run into the Dissonance Field and it'll start taking much, much more damage (aside from also putting the raid out of danger).
--Dread Screech. Hits 2/5 raid members (10/25) and everyone within 5 yards of those raid members for 80k physical damage. Yes, this can overlap, so stay spread out.
--Eyes of the Empress. Tank-swap gimmick, stacks to 5, at 5 stacks you get mind-controlled and welp.

Phase 2: Empress goes immune to damage and summons adds (two Reavers, six Windblades). Adds that are near each other put a stacking damage buff on each other.
--Windblades: Fixates on random players, throws out Sticky Resin onto other players. If you get Sticky Resin, run to one of the orange puddles to help build an Amber Trap; when the Amber Trap is built, kite an add over it to trap it and force all the other adds to fixate on breaking the trap.
--Reavers: Frontal cone AOE thing. Melee can run over the Reavers' tanks to pick up a buff that allows them to deal additional Nature damage whenever they deal damage. Probably beneficial to keep one of these up even after the phase, so melee can keep this buff up.

Phase 3: Starts at 30% health; Empress goes crazy. Retains Eyes of the Empress and Dread Screech, but also does:
--Calamity. All raid members get hit for 50% of their current health.
--Consuming Terror. Pretty much identical to (using a recent example) Blackhorn's shockwave, except it fears instead of stuns.
--Amassing Darkness. Spreading raid damage; starts by hitting 1 player for 60k damage, adding 1 more target every few seconds until eventually everyone in the raid is getting hit.
--Vision of Demise. After 4 seconds, you get feared and will deal damage to everyone in 8 yards of you for 20 seconds. Immunity effects (AMS, cloak, etc.) will prevent this from going off.

mutagen
mutagen's picture
A slightly shorter tactical

A slightly shorter tactical overview:

Phase 1:
Tanks are doing the tank thing, switching before the stack hits 5
Melee is on the back of the boss
Ranged/Healers are spread out
The first person with cry of terror goes to the closest Dissonance Field, all subsequent people go to that field as well
Healers use raid wide CDs for

Phase 2:
Tanks pick up the adds, blowing CDs / healers use tank CDs
DPS starts killing windblades
Fixated people run around (away from the group, as per your advice)
Designated people start building traps on the left/right for the reavers
Windblades are dead/low, traps are built -> reavers get moved in

Rinse/Repeat Phase 1

Phase:
Everyone stacks on the boss
People with the debuff run out of the raid, get dispelled
Everyone moves in a group when Consuming Terror comes out, ala Blackhorn
Healers keep people above 50%

Kulgarr
Another approach for P2...

I found this alternate strat that may help out a lot for getting through P2.

The paragraph below is from a tank spot video:

We had one tank pick up both Reavers and drag them to the front of the room. The other tank picked up all 6 of the Windblades and started kiting them. Aggro is tricky here but liberal use of aoe abilities plus tricks and misdirects made that a non issue for us. You can see our DK running around in a big circle in the room kiting the Windblades. Dps is focused on two things. First, killing a few of the Windblades to make tanking them viable. And second, kiting resin into a drop point marked with star to get a trap done as soon as possible. In this video we had a trap ready while there were still 4 Windblades up and about a minute into the phase. After that, we dropped 3 more of the Windblades so that they didn't bust the trap and left one alive while we prepared the 2nd trap.

Seems like this is a pretty decent approach. What ever tank takes the windblades will need to use big cool downs to survive picking them up and establishing aggro then kite them until there are only 2-3 remaining. After that it should be no problem to tank them.

I also found that lots of groups were using stuns, slows, knockbacks, etc. on the windblades (does not work on revers) to minimize damage and make kiting easier on the windblade tank.

Kull

Kulgarr
and another that looks promising...

We have each tank taking one side (and the beginning of the phase is when you should pop dem CDs), and all DPS focusing on my side at first. When the Windblades on my side are dead, I go and taunt the other Reaver, while the DPS moves on to deal with the remaining Windblades (obviously leaving at least one alive untill 2 traps have been formed). Simple and effective.

Skarn
Skarn's picture
Both nice!

I like both of those! I had heard about one tank taking all the Windblades, but they didn't mention kiting them. Was that a 25 or 10 man? 25 would have extra MDs/Tricks to help with aggro, though it's probably possible in 10. Just touchier.

I'm more a fan of the second method, burning three down and taunting the Reaver. Should get three down faster than the method we were going with, since we won't have to switch to the other side.

For Science!

mutagen
mutagen's picture
The one attempt where Bluepea

The one attempt where Bluepea accelerated the first Dissonance Field explosion by casting from inside felt smoother, it gave more time to top off the raid before the second and allowed the person with Cry of Terror to exit earlier with more health. I'd like to try this more, with maybe more ranged and even healers contributing briefly, especially if they can pick a time that has a smaller DPS impact. This may result in a DPS gain if it gets the person with Cry of Terror out earlier to refresh DoTs or cycle higher DPS cooldowns earlier.

For example, Ory steps in when DoTs are up and MB is on cooldown for a few seconds, casts Mind Flay a few times and steps out to burn the next MB cooldown and refresh DoTs. I could step in and cast low MPS spells while the Dissonance Field is at high %, step out and abuse SS (to make Aanvil feel bad about healing meters).

Those are some great suggestions for making P2 safer. We need to spend more time there to get the traps sorted. Marking a trap would be great, there were times when I had trouble finding a puddle because I was spazzing about healing.

Krokuss
Good comments all. So if we

Good comments all. So if we add an additional caster into Dissonance we bring one down quicker which might be easier to manage when they blow (they are currently exploding so close together in timing = harder to heal). Extra damage to additional caster can be managed?

Traps - are most groups suggesting 2 traps need to be down to beat encounter or is one feasable?

Skarn
Skarn's picture
One is Fine

A single trap is definitely fine, so long as the other Reaver is low on HP. Or dead. That may work well with Alternate Method #2 where we burn three Windblades down on Kul and he taunts the other Reaver. The AoE should bring the first Reaver down some so we could leave melee DPS on that Reaver while ranged do some damage to the Windblades.

One other thing that will help damage that I didn't worry about the first night. The Reavers put a debuff on the tank that does a little bit of nature damage to them. The benefit is that if another player stands next to the tank, you get a buff that gives you extra damage. It lasts two minutes and you just have to be next to the tank for a couple seconds, so it's worth running in to grab it so long as you avoid the cone attack. Melee at least should grab it.

Due to this buff, it can actually be a DPS boost to keep one of the Reavers alive for part of the second Boss phase.

For Science!

Kulgarr
Revers

I came across a strat that suggest that it is by no means a wipe to leave one Rever alive and un-trapped, in fact it can be a really good thing! If this happens the Rever should be tanked by the off tank to the side of the boss (facing away form the raid). They do not hit very hard at all and should be minimal drain on healers.
The reason that this can be beneficial is that the Revers apply a de-buff to the tank called "poison drenched armor". This de-buff does a managable amount of Nature damage(20K/sec) , but also gives the recipient a 75% chance on attack to prock "poison Fumes" which temporarily enchants your weapon to do 50K bonus nature damage. The buff can be spread via contact with the tank to the dps (lasts 2 min's once you get it). This can add up to a decent amount of bonus damage on the boss over the course of the fight, and yes it works for hunters!

Kull

Skarn
Skarn's picture
Hah!

Beat ya by 2.5 hours, Kul! ;)

Yes, it does work for hunters, I got the buff once last week in our tries. I don't think it works for casters though.

For Science!

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