Mythic Xhul'horac Help

[Chewtoy]

Hello friends!

I'm trying to prep for this one early as we don't have a very stellar raid comp for it. We do have the three mages which will help with chains, but our soaking black holes leaves a lot to be desired.

Soaking order
Now, I've seen various approaches to this one. Obviously rogues are amazing, warlocks can be doable, DKs can be doable, disc's maybe with a lot of really big self shielding?

Our current available comp is:
Tanks - Prot Warrior (hi), Druid, DK (mainly dps)
Healing - Disc, Paladin, Monk, Druid, Shaman
DPS - 3 hunters, 3 mages, 1 rogue, 2 dps dk (our 3rd tank is in here), 1 warrior, 2 elem shaman, 2 shadow priests, 2 boomkins, 1 sketchy warlock (doesn't always show up/dps performance low)
Lower performers/geared: 1 warrior, 1 enhance shaman

I'm not exactly sure what to do with it. If the warlock is around is the timer far enough apart that we can do Warlock, Rogue, DPS DK 1, DPS DK 2, repeat? If not...is there any other good option there, maybe a disc on the 2nd or one of the middle ones?

I did see a log where the druid tank in a 3 tank scenario took a lot of them too which could be an option for us. The druid tank actually takes the first three while tanking ominus from the look of it here https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...nA#view=replay or am I looking at that wrong? He also takes the 4th, and then the 7th I believe.

Any other suggestions on soaking comp?

3 Tank vs 2 Tank
What are the benefits of two tanking versus 3 besides the increased dps? I mentioned above it seemed like you may be able to soak with a tank for a bunch of it so would it be worth it to have our bear doing that and the dk helping tank?

Am I looking at this log wrong? It seems like he gets both a void slash and a fel slash on the paladin tank....yet no explosion happens? At least if you watch Xhul's target of target, but it does look like the warrior takes the damage.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...nA#view=replay

I thought I remember seeing somewhere that he always casts void slash whenever an add dies no matter what, or is that incorrect?

DPS Priority
Obviously the imps and then voidfiends should be top priority the whole time. However, after that do you then just cleave off of Xhul himself, or do you Target Akillion first and cleave off of him, then cleave off of Ominus since they're scarier? Does this even matter since they effectively share health?

Any other helpful suggestions would be appreciated!

[Tojara]

You just cleave off the boss the entire time and have range focus void fiends. The big adds share health with the boss, therefore single targeting and not cleaving is just going to make everything die slower.

Blackholes do flat damage, aren't effected by DR and the only thing that gets by it is DRs. CoW, AMS, PW:Shield, sacrificial pact/dark bargain, or just really high health pools are ideal if you don't have rogues.

You can 2 or 3 tank it. The benefits of 3 tanking is that tanks really won't be in danger of dying the entire time, where with 2 tanks your tanks will be in danger for at least the first 2 minutes of the encounter. Obviously you can manage with 2 with proper CDs though, it's just more strain. To be fair, there is very little damage in this encounter. We 3 tank it, but that's because our third tank is a prot paladin who does over 90k DPS, while our ret paladin does about 110. Under those circumstances we are losing a little bit of damage for tank stability.

[Balakam]

You can see in our video how we handle the voidfiend etc ...

Just 2 tanks it, tanks just ask for external when needed.

Your raid comp maybe lack of rogues but you should have a sufficient number of stun for the imps, just grimp, stun, kill them, then do void adds, then focus on boss adds and do as much passive cleave as possible.

[Roggendorf]

3 mages is perfect for cheesing Empowered Chains. Have 3 mages standing ~15 yards from the boss and everyone else in melee range, he will always select one of those 3 mages, and he can then Evanesce *during* the cast to immune the chains and prevent them from being applied. Use these weakauras from Rinoa (http://pastebin.com/UQiXjK7e and http://pastebin.com/zRvGc2jp, changing the target name to your name) to detect when Xhul is casting on you so you can Evanesce.

Also, if the mages go fire, the boss and adds will die very quickly. But arcane is better for imp control (3x mages means you have a sequence of 3 supenovas on imps per set, which is perfect) and for focused Voidfiend damage.

Addendum. The 3 mages also can serve as your "black hole bait" group, if everyone else is in melee, so the black holes always spawn in a predictable place. Possible exception being when people are running out to place Fel while the Black Hole is being cast.

Further edit. 3 tanking makes the fight much easier. DK on Akkelion (he can AMS the Flurry which is the main danger) and other two on boss, with the better tank grabbing Void Strike and Omnus. You can game the taunt timing (taunt immediately after Fel Strike from Void Strike tank) so that taunt is available for Omnus and you don't have to rely on misdirects or risk the death of some unfortunate DPS. The Fel Strike tank can play "Goalie" for the imps (they WILL get casts off!) The Void Strike tank needs to watch out for the imp casts.

Everyone needs to watch their feet and move out with the debuffs, that's 95% of the fight in this sentence.

[Proof]

Unless your tanks are all doing insane dps, it would be detrimental to bring more than 2. They just need to know to use strong personal and external cds (magic mitigation) for every add channel (felblaze flurry from vanguard which can be blocked, or withering gaze from omnus which can only be absorbed or mitigated by magic reduction cds) especially when they overlap with fel or void strike from the boss. Never taunt the adds, use a target macro and get snap aggro as they spawn - assign tricks or misdirects as necessary.

His color changes and strike patterns seem erratic until you understand the precise mechanism behind them:
First change from fel to void occurs in the low 80% range after he draws energy from the purple portal
For the remainder of the fight, he will alternate colors with each strike AND...
When Vanguard dies he will swap to purple (void) and his strike cooldown is reset
When Omnus dies he will swap to green (fel) and his strike cooldown is reset

If he is already the color he would switch to as the adds die, proceed as normal. If this non-swap occurs during a strike cast he may follow up immediately with another strike of the same color.
If he is not the color and switches abruptly, inactive tank must be prepared to taunt quickly as he may perform 2 strikes of opposing charges back to back (in which case they would simply taunt during the 2nd cast).

Besides keeping track of the constant, frequent swaps and your cooldown rotation, you'll need to watch your feet so as not to drop or stand in any fire under the boss. Piece of cake, yeah? JK this fight demands a lot out of tanks, both in terms of mechanics and mitigation. Still, use 2 so you can push phases and kill adds more efficiently.

[Chewtoy]

I think I'm stuck more on figuring out the black hole soak order really as it seems to come closer to every 30 seconds. So a rotation of rogue, dk, dk won't be enough.

If we get a warlock we could maybe do lock, rogue, dk, dk, rogue again, lock again, dk again, dk again but that doesn't even seem to fit it honestly since purgatory is 3 minutes.

How horrible is it to put the chain soaking team and the 4th guy in one, that should be what 250k, or will the next black hole spawn instantly do an explosion?

[Deleted]

The main benefit of bringing 3 tanks to me is that you can use them for both BH-soaking as well as cleaning up fire. We have a DK tank (most tanks can probably do it though) being both a part in the BH-soak rotation as well as doing all of the fel fire cleaning. He blows fel fire 4 times in our strat. Just let the people drop their fire and wait a few secs so they get away and then the tank runs in and blows it up. The increased damage he takes from Shadowfel Annihilation isnt an issue, he can have plenty of stacks. Him dying from everything he was doing was never an issue during progress. He does this is while tanking Omnus of course to get the void debuff, the other two tanks handles Akkelion+Boss. This both givesyou more people to your BH-soaking rotation as well as makes fire-cleaning much easier as you arent as dependent on rogues or timing your fire-cleaning with BH-soaks and whatnot. Use grounding on the void surges with this strat of course.

You could probably use tanks to soak things even more than we do.

[Deleted]

To bring 3 tanks is only recommendable if your tanks suck. You can clean the (green) fire with the person that soaks the black hole and the purple fire if a void surges is casted can be cleaning up by any dps/healer without debuff (and without any cd, it's just <250k damage)

[Adramelch]

I think I'm stuck more on figuring out the black hole soak order really as it seems to come closer to every 30 seconds. So a rotation of rogue, dk, dk won't be enough.

If we get a warlock we could maybe do lock, rogue, dk, dk, rogue again, lock again, dk again, dk again but that doesn't even seem to fit it honestly since purgatory is 3 minutes.

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I'm pretty sure DK's are meant to soak with glyphed AMS (+shields from priest). That's how our guys did it.

[Deleted]

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I'm pretty sure DK's are meant to soak with glyphed AMS (+shields from priest). That's how our guys did it.

I didnt even have AMS glyphed, I just jumped in with normal ams, no blood presence or ibf, my purgatory did proc but i got healed up :P, but i think if you glyph it, go blood presence and ibf your purgatory will not proc

[Adramelch]

I didnt even have AMS glyphed, I just jumped in with normal ams, no blood presence or ibf, my purgatory did proc but i got healed up :P, but i think if you glyph it, go blood presence and ibf your purgatory will not proc

I think just glyphed AMS is enough, although not 100% sure and going to check logs in such detail is something I am not interested in.

[Dracodraco]

I think I'm stuck more on figuring out the black hole soak order really as it seems to come closer to every 30 seconds. So a rotation of rogue, dk, dk won't be enough.

If we get a warlock we could maybe do lock, rogue, dk, dk, rogue again, lock again, dk again, dk again but that doesn't even seem to fit it honestly since purgatory is 3 minutes.

How horrible is it to put the chain soaking team and the 4th guy in one, that should be what 250k, or will the next black hole spawn instantly do an explosion?

You can never put the chain soaking team in. If they have shadow debuffs, they can't be targetted by fel abilities, so if they soak a black hole, next empowered chains won't go on them (and you will have to deal with it "normally").

Why do you insist on solo soaking them? When we're lacking soakers, we just put 2x people in each. Hand them a shield each from a disc priest as they soak and GG, they'll survive. We use any ranged for this - hunters, boomkins, shadow priests, elementals etc... Just stick any 2 of them in there.

[Deleted]

I didnt even have AMS glyphed, I just jumped in with normal ams, no blood presence or ibf, my purgatory did proc but i got healed up :P, but i think if you glyph it, go blood presence and ibf your purgatory will not proc

IBF is useless, dmg reduction spells doesn't work - the hit is only 1 million, any1 would be able to soak it if such things worked.

[Spotnick]

I'm trying to understand one thing about this fight.

I was told Fel Surge was targeting the 3 melee closest to the boss and 3 ranged closest to the boss. As a mistweaver I'm trying to figure the spot to not get it and it seems I get it at range or at melee.

So is there any truth in that? is it possible to bait it to avoid healers to get it or it's a urban legend?

[Balakam]

I'm trying to understand one thing about this fight.

I was told Fel Surge was targeting the 3 melee closest to the boss and 3 ranged closest to the boss. As a mistweaver I'm trying to figure the spot to not get it and it seems I get it at range or at melee.

So is there any truth in that? is it possible to bait it to avoid healers to get it or it's a urban legend?

Being slitghly away from the boss compared to range group increase your chances not having the fel surge yes, but only the void add kitters should do that normaly.

[Spotnick]

Being slitghly away from the boss compared to range group increase your chances not having the fel surge yes, but only the void add kitters should do that normaly.

I know for the kiting group, but is it random who it picks from melee and range group? I was told it was always the 3 closest melee and 3 closest range, and it doesn't seem to be the case.

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I found the quote.

The chains are 100% predictable, just fyi. They go on the furthest clump of people away from the boss. Fel surge goes on the closest people to the boss, and void surge goes to the furthest. Because of this, we used 2x mages+1x hunter for the chain group, and 1x shadow priest for the void surge - if chains targetted the shadow priest by accident (because he was too far out when cast went off etc), he could just guise, and the boss would re-cast onto the mages/hunter. If the hunter got it, feign and it'd land on a mage, evans, no chains. If a mage got it twice in a row they'd invis (which also makes it recast) to get it on the other mage or the hunter, who would then also feign, and in the end it'd end up on the correct mage who can Evans it.

There has to be another condition that being closest to the boss, because it's targeting me (mistweaver) 75% of the time and I'm completely behind the melee.. Maybe rogues because they soak the black holes are not targeted when they have the void debuff? (though they use it to clear some green)

[Xequecal]

3 mages is perfect for cheesing Empowered Chains. Have 3 mages standing ~15 yards from the boss and everyone else in melee range, he will always select one of those 3 mages, and he can then Evanesce *during* the cast to immune the chains and prevent them from being applied. Use these weakauras from Rinoa (http://pastebin.com/UQiXjK7e and http://pastebin.com/zRvGc2jp, changing the target name to your name) to detect when Xhul is casting on you so you can Evanesce.

Can you explain more how this works? If everyone is in melee range, wouldn't the shadow adds spread fire all over melee very quickly? Or are those three mages also kiting the shadow adds in addition to cheesing the chains?

[Dracodraco]

Can you explain more how this works? If everyone is in melee range, wouldn't the shadow adds spread fire all over melee very quickly? Or are those three mages also kiting the shadow adds in addition to cheesing the chains?

People just don't get hit when the void fiends blink around. Either that, or just have the raid setup like this: Mages*---Raid+Fiends-Melee+imps.

*(+1-2 people to feign/guise chains if you don't have 3/4 mages; need 4 out there for 3x chain targets, 1x void surge target)

Thats what we do. AKA, ranged are close, but not so close that fiends get into melee.

I know for the kiting group, but is it random who it picks from melee and range group? I was told it was always the 3 closest melee and 3 closest range, and it doesn't seem to be the case.

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I found the quote.



There has to be another condition that being closest to the boss, because it's targeting me (mistweaver) 75% of the time and I'm completely behind the melee.. Maybe rogues because they soak the black holes are not targeted when they have the void debuff? (though they use it to clear some green)

That'd be my quote.
I thought it was fairly obvious that you can't get targetted by a fel debuff ability if you've got a void debuff; That means the players would constantly explode the entire raid for a 200K+stacking debuff dmg taken, due to no fault of their own. And frequently, aswell, considering how often abilities go out. But let it be known:
A player with a void debuff can not be the target of Fel Surge or Fel Chains.
A player with a fel debuff can not be the target of Void Surge (Or soak a black hole without exploding, but they CAN run into it if they really want to. I guess <.<).

There are other factors for sure, which is likely that it compiles a list of eligible people (EG, 14 people can get fel surge), sorts them in a list, and gives them a value from 1 to 14 - 14 being the closest to the boss, 1 the furthest. It then rolls to decide which players gets the surges - with the closest being 14 times as likely to get it as the furthest. This explains why melee always gets some, but some occasionally gets skipped over, and the furthest ranged never gets any because the chance is so abyssmally low (and why void surge always goes on the furthest target, or someone very close to his position).

[Xequecal]

Can you explain more how this works? If everyone is in melee range, wouldn't the shadow adds spread fire all over melee very quickly? Or are those three mages also kiting the shadow adds in addition to cheesing the chains?

Ah ok, that makes sense. By the way, does Deterrence work to prevent chains application? I know it's a 3-minute CD but we'll probably be running this boss with 5 hunters and 1 mage, and could just swap them out if it does work.

[Spotnick]

People just don't get hit when the void fiends blink around. Either that, or just have the raid setup like this: Mages*---Raid+Fiends-Melee+imps.

*(+1-2 people to feign/guise chains if you don't have 3/4 mages; need 4 out there for 3x chain targets, 1x void surge target)

Thats what we do. AKA, ranged are close, but not so close that fiends get into melee.




That'd be my quote.
I thought it was fairly obvious that you can't get targetted by a fel debuff ability if you've got a void debuff; That means the players would constantly explode the entire raid for a 200K+stacking debuff dmg taken, due to no fault of their own. And frequently, aswell, considering how often abilities go out. But let it be known:
A player with a void debuff can not be the target of Fel Surge or Fel Chains.
A player with a fel debuff can not be the target of Void Surge (Or soak a black hole without exploding, but they CAN run into it if they really want to. I guess <.<).

There are other factors for sure, which is likely that it compiles a list of eligible people (EG, 14 people can get fel surge), sorts them in a list, and gives them a value from 1 to 14 - 14 being the closest to the boss, 1 the furthest. It then rolls to decide which players gets the surges - with the closest being 14 times as likely to get it as the furthest. This explains why melee always gets some, but some occasionally gets skipped over, and the furthest ranged never gets any because the chance is so abyssmally low (and why void surge always goes on the furthest target, or someone very close to his position).

I didn't say it didn't make sense, Floopa told me 3 closest melee and 2 closest ranged, that didn't work at all lol.

Thanks for clarification, that's what I tried to figure, because it didn't make any sense when I looked at the logs.

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Oh another question.

Our only shaman is enhancement on this fight and he was using totemic projection to move his totem and the void surge bait is failing like 90% of the time, somebody told us today moving the totem is the issue.

Anyone is using an enhancement shaman for baiting? does he need to go out or dropping the totem in melee works?