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  1. #1
    Fluffy Kitten Sonnillon's Avatar
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    Best tactic for 25-man normal Garrosh w/ low DPS

    What's the best way to handle 25-man garrosh normal in a full PUG, with lowish DPS?

    2 tanks, 5 healers and 18 DPS. We cannot cut a healer, or else we'll die to lack of enough healing.

    We went with killing the weapon and adds, but ended up with 2 empowered whirling when boss was at 35%-40% or so. Which would mean few more of the whirls and 1 more realm...

    I am afraid that we'd run out of room if we'd ignore the weapons all together in all the phases. Even leaving weapons only up in 2nd phase we could run out of room.

    Was my first time leading 25-man "current-tier" raid, so looking 25-man advice for Garrosh normal. We lost half the raid after second emp. whirl (leaving aside the deaths from people lagging out).
    Last edited by Sonnillon; 2014-03-31 at 05:47 AM.

  2. #2
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    Not 100% sure what youre asking to be honest. There's no shortcut on Garrosh (afaik!). There's 2 different ways of handling the fight:

    overgear/overdps it and get him to P3 during 2nd transition or shortly after (~20 seconds after you drop down) or

    deal with the emp. whirlings.

    In regards to dealing with the emp. whirlings you either kite the adds or spread to kill them individually.

  3. #3
    Stood in the Fire
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    With my guilds dps we push him to p3 before the 2nd transition, makes the fight a cakewalk. Low dps makes that fight wayyyyy harder and the only way to make it easier is more dps. But definately leave the weapons up in p2, its just wasted dps to kill them. Make sure to stack right on the edge of the previous weapon so u overlap the circles n save room. Also have the offtank kite the adds in p3 and ignore them as far as dps goes, just focus boss/mc's.
    Last edited by Silversorrow; 2014-03-31 at 06:46 AM.

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by Sonnillon View Post
    I am afraid that we'd run out of room if we'd ignore the weapons all together in all the phases. Even leaving weapons only up in 2nd phase we could run out of room.
    There's no advantage to ignoring weapons in phase 1 as he does nothing dangerous in that phase and there's no reason to rush through it. Take your time in phase 1 and do the mechanics.

    You cannot run out of room by ignoring the weapons in phase 2 unless your DPS is so bad that you end up going to a third intermission. He will only throw a certain number of weapons (4?) between each intermission, so you can start moving one direction as soon as p2 starts and then go the other direction after the second transition. The hard part of this strategy is after the second transition as he has empowered whirls and you have to control where the weapons land while also spreading out to avoid the hits from empowered whirl add spawns.

    Obviously, that's the hard part of the fight for any strategy. Ignoring weapons during p2 sacrifices some space in the room to out more DPS on the boss and SHOULD result in pushing the boss out of phase 2 faster (e.g., one empowered whirl instead of two). If it doesn't work, you just don't have the DPS.

    Depending on raid comp, you could also try using the stack and burn method during p2 before second transition. The entire raid stacks with Garrosh in the middle and cleaves the desecrated weapons and mind-controlled players all at the same time as the boss, it's the best way to squeeze as much DPS as possible out of the raid, but it requires good healing (and coordinated raid CDs) and enough DPS to blow up weapons before they kill everyone. I wouldn't suggest this unless you have a lot of strong raid CDs (PW:B, Devotion Aura, Spirit Link Totem and Smoke Bomb are ideal, healing CDs are also helpful).

    However, your best option is probably to look at ways your healers and DPS can increase their output.
    Last edited by Adhemar; 2014-03-31 at 06:47 AM.

  5. #5
    Spreading to kill the adds is hardly difficult. That said, if you can't bring him lower than 35-40% before the second whirl, your only real option is to replace people who can't put out the neccessary dps. We got him lower during "progress" (never making the third transistion) with half alts, half mains the first week of SoO doing the (then) standard of place mark, run to other mark, kill wep, repeat. If you can't manage that now, something's very, very wrong.

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Dracodraco View Post
    half alts, half mains the first week of SoO
    Which half were random PUGs?

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Adhemar View Post
    Which half were random PUGs?
    It doesn't really matter. If the leader of the pug isn't actually requiring a set item level (in most cases, +550 due to legendary cloak dragging it up - my warlock is 558 without doing normals), nor experience, then it will take a fair few wipes to kill a boss due to carrying people. It's my experience, though, that a lot of people with decent characters/experience would like to join in on Garrosh normal due to the chance of heirlooms. But at this point, most garrosh pugs will average +560 ilvl if they're decently put together. That alone should be plenty to bridge any "skill gap".

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Dracodraco View Post
    It doesn't really matter. If the leader of the pug isn't actually requiring a set item level (in most cases, +550 due to legendary cloak dragging it up - my warlock is 558 without doing normals), nor experience, then it will take a fair few wipes to kill a boss due to carrying people. It's my experience, though, that a lot of people with decent characters/experience would like to join in on Garrosh normal due to the chance of heirlooms. But at this point, most garrosh pugs will average +560 ilvl if they're decently put together. That alone should be plenty to bridge any "skill gap".
    Of course it matters. I don't think the advice he was looking for was "kick the low DPS and increase the minimum item level you accept to your PUG."

    He asked for advice and you delivered condescension (without adding anything useful), instead.

  9. #9
    The only response to this is simply to tell people do do more dps. There's no secret tactics to something like this, with low dps you're going to get empowered whirls (which are taxing on your healers and cost your raid dps) and you're going to get a lot of desecrated weapons (which isn't really that bad). Either people pick up their damage, or you just deal with the mechanics. If you have a brewmaster, just kite the adds from emp whirls around the room and that'll free up some of your dps. If you don't, well good luck spreading and killing the adds with pugs.

    We went with killing the weapon and adds, but ended up with 2 empowered whirling when boss was at 35%-40% or so. Which would mean few more of the whirls and 1 more realm...
    In the group I kill 25m normal with on my alt, we get 2 emp whirls in the entire fight. If you're getting 2 before p3, you either need to pick up dps, or account for the amount of CDs you need to compensate for those whirls... also probably want to kite the adds cuz you can't afford that dps loss of swapping to that many add packs.
    Last edited by britishbubba; 2014-03-31 at 08:02 AM.

  10. #10
    Fluffy Kitten Sonnillon's Avatar
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    Well the average ilvl of people was 545-560 +/- 5. Some w/o legendary head enchant/cloak. As this was a run from boss 1 and we got to Garrosh with the same group, I didn't see any point in tossing out people at Garrosh to get higher ilvl ones in (most cannot come on their mains due to various raid locks) nor I will start doing that in future.

    Well I sorta see the point with the weapons and placement in phase 2. I am not sure that the boss tank will survive Garrosh's stacks after the first emp.w. w/o a tank swap if the other tank is kiting the adds around. So at least adds from 1st emp. w. should be killed imho.
    If people wouldn't have to swap to weapons (just keep DoTs running on 'em) we could get more DPS out of it.

    The stacking on boss during phase 2 I really didn't think off, but if I get the roughly the same setup with warriors, DKs, rogues, holy palas, disco priests and couple of shamans it seems like a nice alternative to try.

    Besides, if my main goal would be the looms and not gear up my alt(s), then I would do 10-man with guild and very few pugs
    Last edited by Sonnillon; 2014-03-31 at 09:24 AM.

  11. #11
    I will try and dredge up a video of the stacking method. It's quite efficient, but your damage dealers must deal with the desecrated weapons quickly, and if your DPS is as low as you say it is, that may not be possible for your group. It also requires good healers (shamans are crazy good for this, disc CDs are OP) and good raid CD coordination. I typically use one damage reduction for each desecrate and another for each whirl. Near the end of each phase, you get a desecrate and a whirl nearly simultaneously and having two strong raid CDs stacked there is a must (and I typically throw three at it). 25-man frequently has enough raid CDs to drown everything an encounter can dish out, but you are dependent on people actually using them where they are needed (which is iffy with PUGs).

    The don't-kill-weapons strategy is nearly as much effective DPS in the boss without the risk of getting crushed by desecrates and whirls. You can start with the normal positions that you use for phase 1 weapon killing. When you land from p1-p2 transition, you go to the first of these stack points. When the first desecrate hits, you run out of it to the boss for mind controls, and then you run toward the edge of the existing desecrate opposite from where you were going in p1. The result is that you drop weapons in a line around the outside of the room, moving away from the center (to leave as much room as possible for p3). You should move the boss in the same direction you're dropping the desecrates (i.e., toward on of the engineer spawn points) to keep him in range of the raid. When you come down from the second transition, you do the same thing in the other direction (starting at the other marker you used in p1). If you don't push the boss to p3 before he pulls you into a third transition, things are going to get very tough. Managing empowered MCs with PUGs is rough, and doing it for more than just p3 is not going to be easy.

    I've done the stack and burn method and ended up with two whirls before p3, even though we used heroism at the start of phase 2 to push it as fast as possible. It's possible to deal with those two and then three whirls in p3, but it's not fun. We really only got through it because it was most of my 10-man raid carrying 15 PUGs.

    Garrosh is a significant step up in DPS requirements from the rest of the zone, we started doing some 25-man cleanup nights to fill gear gaps (three 4pc sets finished in one night ... what?) and found we could literally carry anyone, no matter how bad, through Siegecrafter and Paragons but once we got to Garrosh the sub-150k DPS had to go. You might want to plan around this, maybe set Garrosh up as a separate run with its own time.

    Also, it doesn't have to be a brewmaster to kite. Our bear did just fine and a warrior would probably be even better. The stacks on the tank can be easily dealt with with external cooldowns (pain suppression, iron bark, hand of sacrifice, life cocoon, etc.). The kiting tank will want to come back in range of the boss after each whirl to pick up new adds and needs to try to stay near healers for the most part, or be able to keep himself alive. Others can assist with kiting (totemic projection earthgrab, hunter traps), but be sure that no one is going to DPS adds if you choose to kite. One misplaced DoT can result in buffing 20 adds at once and destroy your tank before he even has a chance to get out of their melee range to start kiting.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by britishbubba View Post
    In the group I kill 25m normal with on my alt, we get 2 emp whirls in the entire fight. If you're getting 2 before p3, you either need to pick up dps, or account for the amount of CDs you need to compensate for those whirls... also probably want to kite the adds cuz you can't afford that dps loss of swapping to that many add packs.
    3 is common, I've personally had 5 and I've heard about kills which went into a third transition. The fight gets much easier if you can kill him in 2, but that's not how the fight was designed and it's not impossible to go into a third phase 2 sub-phase and still walk out with a kill. Whirls are definitely the worst part for 25s, but you can kite several spawns of them and they are spaced far enough apart that you only need to rotate 4 or 5 cooldowns.

  12. #12
    was in an openraid-chat pug the other day that disbanded due to this. between emp whirl adds and mind controls, we'd reduce garrosh's HP by 2 or 3% between each emp whirl. was rather comical. don't think there's a real solution other then farm more gear and have people shape up.
    typically the biggest loss of dps is that guys aren't actually dpsing, running aruond with flailing arms and unsure what to shoot. make sure people run into the same direction when adds spawn so that you don't have to run to hit an add or a MCed player and emphasis that garrosh dps matters a lot. being stacked up on garrosh when the MCs happen helps a lot as there will be a lot of incidental cleave dmg just from cloak procs on both garrosh and the MC targets.
    but no, there's no real solution. either you have good dps and skip most of the whirls (we get 1 emp whirl total on heroic for example) or you just have to do them the intended way.

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Adhemar View Post
    I will try and dredge up a video of the stacking method.
    www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSPqqRg_mUc

    Seems to be the method I had in mind. It's by far the easiest way to "teach" Garrosh to poeple without experience. Phase 2 MCs basically end immediately due to cleave so you don't even have to worry about that mechanic until phase 3.

  14. #14
    The Lightbringer Hottage's Avatar
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    Basically the stacking method makes phase 1 as braindead as possible, and also makes phase two far easier due to the cleavage on MCs (just requires people to spread after the whirl for adds). Then all you have to worry about is phase 3.

    End of the day though, if DPS is too low to beat soft enrage from the room filling with Empowered weapons, it doesn't matter how well you do tactics - just gotta replace DPS or wait til you are better geared.
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  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by kaib View Post
    was in an openraid-chat pug the other day that disbanded due to this. between emp whirl adds and mind controls, we'd reduce garrosh's HP by 2 or 3% between each emp whirl. was rather comical. don't think there's a real solution other then farm more gear and have people shape up.
    Haha, I was in one just like that. Knew it was going to be bad when we got 4 waves of warbringers at the start.

    Basically you need everyone doing 200k+ DPS. Reset logs when he heals to full going into P2 so you can see the DPS that actually matter in the fight. If you get more than 2 EWC in P2 it's basically game over because I bet the raid will be split from arsehole to breakfast due to desecrates being everywhere and MC's will just start owning the raid plus deaths you are going to get with the group spread out.

    If you're leading the raid from the start of the raid or on earlier bosses this is where you need to start sorting this out. Just because you are killing easier bosses doesn't mean that you should not be kicking people. You need to continually improve the raid as it goes on or you'll get to Garrosh and the good players that you actually have will just leave because they know there are heaps of good high skilled raids out there that are just doing Garrosh. Don't let their high ilvls fool you, a lot of people have no idea how to play their alt and could be 560 and not even done a normal raid on them. When asking for people ask them how much DPS they pull and then hold them to that amount or let them go.

  16. #16
    Fluffy Kitten Sonnillon's Avatar
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    Thanks Adhemar for the video and in-depth description. We'll try both methods and see which one works for us the best. The stacking method could work great as we have the CDs from various classes, however if CDs are used for whirlings and weapons... How would one go about the dmg in realms, other then make damn sure that all get the buff?

    My group evolved from 25-man FLEX and over half the people are doing normals the first time, the people who are actually doing nice numbers are alts of heroic raiders . So I can imagine that with few runs and more gear collecting we'll have the boss down.

    The log reset part is a nice point, which I will have to keep in mind.
    Last edited by Sonnillon; 2014-03-31 at 12:14 PM.

  17. #17
    The Lightbringer Hottage's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Sonnillon View Post
    Thanks Adhemar for the video and in-depth description. We'll try both methods and see which one works for us the best. The stacking method could work great as we have the CDs from various classes, however if CDs are used for whirlings and weapons... How would one go about the dmg in realms, other then make damn sure that all get the buff?
    The point of the buff is to make sure everyone gets it. If people are mouth-breathing over the buff, they are failing the encounter mechanics...
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  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by Adhemar View Post
    Of course it matters. I don't think the advice he was looking for was "kick the low DPS and increase the minimum item level you accept to your PUG."

    He asked for advice and you delivered condescension (without adding anything useful), instead.
    He asked what could be done to kill the boss with all the whirls and a third transition. It's not condescending saying "make sure people do proper dps". They've cleared 13 normal modes - their dps should be more than fine to manage not getting a third intermission. The main issue is that if the DPS is low enough that you GET a third intermission at 30-35%, chances are that the amount of damage you end up doing to the boss in between killing adds after each whirl will see you having another 2-3 whirls after the third intermission. Then another 2-3 in the last phase. Surviving 7-9 empowered whirls is *difficult* in a pug. The best bet is to just do more damage and make sure everyone performs. There's no "magic trick".
    As for desecrates, as has been explained, you'll never really "run out of room" even if you try to fill the room up if you can skip the third intermission. It will make whirls difficult due to the timing (whirl+desec right after or before), though.

    Quote Originally Posted by mrgummage View Post
    The point of the buff is to make sure everyone gets it. If people are mouth-breathing over the buff, they are failing the encounter mechanics...
    It's not really. In normal, no one can have it and you'll be fine. Usually half the raid will get it accidentelly, though. If you're dying to annihilates in the intermissions, your healers are slacking, as the damage really isn't that intense, and they should have personal cds ready for it (rely on raid cds for empowered whirls as they are usually much shorter and more burst dmg than the constant annihilates).
    Last edited by Dracodraco; 2014-03-31 at 05:17 PM.

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by Sonnillon View Post
    What's the best way to handle 25-man garrosh normal in a full PUG, with lowish DPS?

    2 tanks, 5 healers and 18 DPS. We cannot cut a healer, or else we'll die to lack of enough healing.

    We went with killing the weapon and adds, but ended up with 2 empowered whirling when boss was at 35%-40% or so. Which would mean few more of the whirls and 1 more realm...

    I am afraid that we'd run out of room if we'd ignore the weapons all together in all the phases. Even leaving weapons only up in 2nd phase we could run out of room.

    Was my first time leading 25-man "current-tier" raid, so looking 25-man advice for Garrosh normal. We lost half the raid after second emp. whirl (leaving aside the deaths from people lagging out).
    3 things.

    In a 25 man, there's a couple viable tactics for weapons, either you have ~3 DPS dedicated to removing them, generally high ST damage or cleave with no positional requirements (Destro locks, for example) or you have everyone with a dot multidot the weapon, which is esp good if you've got classes like warlocks and spriest, who can score procs off the the extra ticks.

    They should continue to dot up weapons in P3, but not at the expense of having to move out of range of heals or the boss.


    Secondly, If your DPS is low, you might wanna time your runs. if you're getting to P2-second transition at the 10m mark, you should lust on the pull. Chances are your DPS isn't that bad, but if it is, this will make P1 a lot faster which will give you more attempts to work on the actual hard parts of the fight.

    Finally, P3 is not mechanically much different than P2, problem is that it'll put a lot of your raiders into a panic "OMG! KILLBOSSGOGOGOG" mode. You need to drill into their heads that MC's and spreading properly for swirls is more important than trying to burn out that last 3%. Tanks generally kite adds for this phase, so it's also important to tank the adds away from melee, and make absolutely sure that the tank's adds DO NOT DIE. Having a bunch of empowered adds will kill the tank, and cause a wipe. MC's need to die ASAP, because if they manage to get an MC off, it can potentially target a tank and cause an instant wipe, which means stacking for MC's is far more imperitive than keeping your personal DPS high.

    The only mechanics that "Ramp up" during P3 are the weapons and the adds. The adds are easily tanked as long as none get empowered. the weapons are your soft enrage, so long as you manage them properly during P2, you should have plenty of time during P3 to burn the remaining ~30% without running out of room.

  20. #20
    OP, if you try the stack and burn weapons in P2, I would suggest that coming back from intermissions you have a ranged group going to a marked location (throne is a fantastic spot for one of them), drop that weapon and then go stack and burn (one less set of raid cools needed). Also when you come back after first intermission, there will be 4 weapons, right after that last weapon lands he does a whirl, in the stack method you need to ensure you have 2+ raid cools to survive that.

    Another thing, when he goes P3, those same people that were placing the weapon when coming back from intermission, need to do the same thing and then get back on top of boss asap. It requires a cool head as raid lead to get the raid to execute.

    *************

    Garrosh normal is a LARGE step up from the other 13 bosses on normal. I treat it like the first heroic encountered in SoO, it is that much of a step up from the rest of the instance.

    You could also try one tank, in the crane temple just have everyone go one way, kill that large add, loop and kill the other. That will give you an additional DPS (assuming one of your tanks has a DPS set). Our 10 man goes, 1 tank, 2 heals and 7 DPS to compensate for low DPS (losing 2 300K+ DPS sucks!).

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