Grand Empress phase 2 - Help!

[Deleted]

So my guild spent about 2 hours on the last boss in HOF tonight, and we just can't seem to get past phase two. I have a couple of questions
1. How do you split up the adds in terms of tanking? Our death knight tank keeps dying/can't establish aggro no matter what way we try to do it.
2. How can DPS get the poison buff safely when the reavers does the poison shockwave or whatever it is in front of them?
3. Are we supposed to aoe the small adds when possible or single target nuke one at a time?

Help would be appreciated a lot, we cleared the 5 first bosses in like 90 minutes but just can't seem to get past this one
Also, as a small side note if any other prot paladins happen to stumble across this threat - Do you use holy prism or the hammer talent (the aoe heal)?

[Deleted]

We have our warrior pick up the 2 big adds and our paladin the 6 small adds.

GoAK and pain sup right away on the paladin, single target down 3 adds one at the time. After that ignore the adds and let the paladin solo the rest of the 3 ( so he can keep up self heal and damage reduction ).

Ignore the poison debuff until P2-P1 transition.

Never ever ever ever.... ever.... use Holy Prism on prot pala.

[Deleted]

Alright, thank you so much! Pretty much clears everything up, however why not spread the poison buff earlier?

[Mythricia]

On our first Normal kill(s) we had the tank with the 6 adds kiting them in a hunter trap. He'd still take major damage from time to time, but if you can mitigate it long enough to stay alive then it's worth it.

The poison AoE is not that vital; we did the first kill without having the buff at all on the raid, only the 2 tanks had it (We didn't even think about it to be fair, we do spread it in raid now -after- the add phase, by having a tank run through us). The cone poison AoE doesn't kill, either, so getting hit by it shouldn't be strictly deadly.

Definitely single-target the small adds down; each dead add reduces the damage all the other adds do, so it's a huge "damage reduction" to kill them one by one (perhaps cleave the last few). This phase is not a DPS race anyway, you just need to survive it in a good enough condition that you can do the rest of the fight afterwards (in terms of cooldowns and healer mana being workable).

[Deleted]

Alright, thank you so much! Pretty much clears everything up, however why not spread the poison buff earlier?

Simply not needed. The first 3 adds die so fast with single target that 1-2 adds is dead before the tank even gets the damage buff and the third one dies shortly after.

After that, dps should not dps at all since the slower the adds dies = less healing on the tank

We simply wait to build 2 traps. At which point the prot pala has brought all adds down to 500k hp, when we got 2 traps, all dps switch to adds and kill them off, we trap 1 big add.

We keep the second big add on the boss tank.

So in the second P1, 1 tank takes boss + add.
The other tank runs out to ranged and give them the buff. Then he taunts the add, then the boss, the other tank goes out and give ranged buff repeat.

After that, when boss reaches around 35%, one tank brings the second add into the trap. when boss reaches 30%, stack up behind boss and give everyone buff, burn the boss.

[Deleted]

Simply not needed. The first 3 adds die so fast with single target that 1-2 adds is dead before the tank even gets the damage buff and the third one dies shortly after.

After that, dps should not dps at all since the slower the adds dies = less healing on the tank

We simply wait to build 2 traps. At which point the prot pala has brought all adds down to 500k hp, when we got 2 traps, all dps switch to adds and kill them off, we trap 1 big add.

We keep the second big add on the boss tank.

So in the second P1, 1 tank takes boss + add.
The other tank runs out to ranged and give them the buff. Then he taunts the add, then the boss, the other tank goes out and give ranged buff repeat.

After that, when boss reaches around 35%, one tank brings the second add into the trap. when boss reaches 30%, stack up behind boss and give everyone buff, burn the boss.

Keeping the 2nd big add alive seems absolutely brilliant, thanks!

[Deleted]

Keeping the 2nd big add alive seems absolutely brilliant, thanks!

Just make sure people are dpsing empress and not the add

[Quincyheart]

We got our first kill tonight on this boss and after our first strategy didn't work we changed and killed her no problem.

We have each tank just take their sides adds, kill a wind dude on either side as quickly as possible, then keep dpsing down wind adds but keeping one alive. One dps (me) runs around and makes traps. You should be able to make two traps just before or after you have dpsed down the 5 wind dudes. Make traps, walk big dudes into them then kill off last wind dude quickly so he cant break a trap.

It's important to note that phase 2 ends after 2:30mins or after all the wind dudes die.

[jfragment]

Here's our video for our other raid teams all about exactly the phase two nightmare transition. Hope it helps. It's where we found most of our wipes.