Mythic Guldan Questions

[Exiztence]

Quoting this for emphasis. We were struggling in phase 1, then started to get to the end of it with the nasty combo, then started to get it DURING the hellfires (instant wipes), then started pushing with the eye, then started beating the eye. As people get the mechanics soaked into the backs of their heads, and theres less moments of "what should I currently be doing", the natural smoothing of movements/rotations/damage will occur.

Guldan is quite simply one of those bosses where you just have to pull it a bunch of times, and then suddenly you're hitting phase 2 and tweaking that part while coasting through phase 1. Think of it like a more complicated Odyn.

Idk due to healer issues we swapped to 3 healing and lusting when 1st add spawns and we blaze through p1 in 2:45, worked very well for us at least.

[Dracodraco]

Idk due to healer issues we swapped to 3 healing and lusting when 1st add spawns and we blaze through p1 in 2:45, worked very well for us at least.

How far have you gotten, though? Keep in mind that P1 healing is miles easier than P2 - all of P1 damage is 100% predictable, and there's no real important dps checks apart from "make sure eyes die fairly quick". P2 has empowered eyes doing a TON of damage along with soul soakers, tank damage, flame targets etc and you need the cooldowns for harvests/eyes.

If you're unable to push P2 before the fifth eye (that spawns right before a storm) doing what you do now, you're going to be in a huge fucking bind 3 healing it, because that part is a lot more intense than any other part healing wise, and you'll be down a healer (and after ~7-8 minutes, your 3 healers will likely all be running on fumes anyway). Most guilds use bloodlust in P2 to make sure they skip the eye+storm combo because it's THAT bad, and P1/3 are a joke output-wise in comparison.

[Exiztence]

How far have you gotten, though? Keep in mind that P1 healing is miles easier than P2 - all of P1 damage is 100% predictable, and there's no real important dps checks apart from "make sure eyes die fairly quick". P2 has empowered eyes doing a TON of damage along with soul soakers, tank damage, flame targets etc and you need the cooldowns for harvests/eyes.

If you're unable to push P2 before the fifth eye (that spawns right before a storm) doing what you do now, you're going to be in a huge fucking bind 3 healing it, because that part is a lot more intense than any other part healing wise, and you'll be down a healer (and after ~7-8 minutes, your 3 healers will likely all be running on fumes anyway). Most guilds use bloodlust in P2 to make sure they skip the eye+storm combo because it's THAT bad, and P1/3 are a joke output-wise in comparison.

Killed it. Druid/Shaman/Paladin healing combo

[Dracodraco]

Killed it. Druid/Shaman/Paladin healing combo

Did you deal with fifth eye, or did the extra DPS allow to push before it?

[Exiztence]

Did you deal with fifth eye, or did the extra DPS allow to push before it?

Pushing before, Gul'dan is around 11%~ before the last black harvest, had to stop dps on some tries to not start transition before the harvest.

[Dracodraco]

Pushing before, Gul'dan is around 11%~ before the last black harvest, had to stop dps on some tries to not start transition before the harvest.

That makes sense then - that's usually the same we do with 4x healers+bloodlust. You're essentially just shifting "stability" in P2/3 (as you meet the same DPS checks, but have less healers incase of shit-hits-the-fan moments like a badly placed flameleap or parasites), in favor of getting P1 over with quicker. Probably decent for farm, still wouldn't recommend it for progress unless you have 3 very good healers and the remaining 1-2 healers suck donkey balls

[Nephcyte]

When to BL p1 or p2 ?

Im currently progressing guldan and RL keeps saying that we should push the boss in p1 before 2nd add comes out, which we were SOMETIMES close to but never made it but about 5-10 seconds. (after 70 wipes) We BL on pull. With one more reclear it would be possible.

Advantages are obvious no wombo combo, and no second add at all in p1. But that makes p2 harder with empowered eye/harvest timings.

So basically back to the title, whats better decisions?

[Dracodraco]

When to BL p1 or p2 ?

Im currently progressing guldan and RL keeps saying that we should push the boss in p1 before 2nd add comes out, which we were SOMETIMES close to but never made it but about 5-10 seconds. (after 70 wipes) We BL on pull. With one more reclear it would be possible.

Advantages are obvious no wombo combo, and no second add at all in p1. But that makes p2 harder with empowered eye/harvest timings.

So basically back to the title, whats better decisions?

As the above discussion says - BL P2 if you're progressing. The second add does nothing of note - his melee swings hit like a wet towel, and you have lots of time to move from pillars. What you should aim to do is push the boss right after the first empowered eye (before he casts hellfire) - that way you only have to deal with a single (relatively easy) combo of hellfire+bonds, and assuming you don't spend zones on first (non-empowered) and second (first empowered) bonds, you have a zone for every bond to make them easier to deal with, when pushing it that quickly.

The only argument for BL in P1 to push before the first big add is "we can make P2 DPS check without bloodlust anyway". If you can't do that, wasting it in P1 is borderline asinine, because you skip a relatively easy part of the fight, very early on in the encounter (3->4 minutes in) that you can easily train and perfect fairly quickly, in favor of trying to learn a much harder part of the fight ~7-8 minutes into the encounter, which means you'll spend AT LEAST double as long figuring it out, just by virtue of the encounter length being doubled.

It's the Guldan Equivelant of pissing your pants to keep yourself warm, really (unless, as stated; You have the DPS to push before fifth eye anyway. In which case, go fucking nuts; BL P1 and BL end of P3 to speed things up).

[Deleted]

Another question regarding BL:

We tried p1 with just and without lust.
With lust we push with like 1% to spare before second add.
Without lust we can avoid the empowered eye in p1 no problem.

We have very few big burst DPS classes and more ranged on this fight vs an ideal comp.

My question is: for those pushing P1 with lust before the second add, how much leeway do you have? I'm trying to figure out if based on our dps we will run into 5th eye regularly in P2 without lust.

Logs if it helps any: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/rjRGBXQnv4WAbLPC

[Dracodraco]

6 Ranged is fairly standard. One issue you'll have when pushing as hard as you can to avoid the empowered eye (rather than killing it) without lust, is that people are likely blowing their cooldowns in P1 twice - that means you won't have them up twice in P2, making the push a lot harder (EG: Aim is to push at 4 minutes; 3 mins used at 0, 4 right after push, 7 during execute. If you push before the eye around 3:30, you'll likely be blowing the cds at 3 mins to get the extra OOMPH to push, making it 0, 3, 6, 9; Which is P3, where they're far less relevant). Assuming that's true, you realistically only have two pushes you should try and do:

If you have P2 dps to skip without lust; Push at 3 mins before fel add.
If you don't have P2 dps to skip without lust; Push at 4 mins when all 3 mins are up, 2 mins are up etc, right after first empowered eye.

Looking at your last P3 attempt where you got to 25%, you had the boss at around 29% when the second harvest comes (with a shaman dead for awhile). Let's say that's 27% with a little practice and a living shaman. Your goal here is to push the boss to around 20% for that comming Storm right after the Harvest. To follow up the storm, two eyes will spawn, one at the storm location, one at his new location about 10 seconds after the first eye should die. You don't get a ton of DPS time on the boss here, so the goal is to have him at 20% ready for execute, kill the eyes, and get him to around 13-14% for the next Storm - after which, nothing happens untill he does the next eye+storm combo 50 seconds later, meaning "burn baby, burn" time.

You're a bit far off right now (about 4-5% I'd estimate), so I'm not sure if it's really feasible; You also have less execute classes than we do, so 20% and 13-14% might not be realistic, it may have to be lower (we had 2x MM hunters, 2x warr, 1x spriest, and 2x rogues with execute-bracers, you have 2x warriors).

[kaib]

very helpful post, thanks!

Learning the timings of P1, followed by getting consistently good attempts. The harsh parts of both P1 and P2 comes at the end, so if you have to do those, you will spend many wipes ALMOST getting through then having someone die (especially on 5th eye during storm in P2).

....

[Chewtoy]

Help! We seem hopelessly stuck in Phase 1 and after getting through Elisande in 83 pulls and basically a week of progress, this is disheartening to still be in Guldan phase 1 after a week.

Logs:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...Ak#view=replay

Attempt 1 - Chew missed CD, Black 2 bonds, Chew full fel scythe it didn't split
Attempt 2 - Khord normal bonds 1 shot, Lenoratte Empowered bonds 1 shot (way out in bumb fuck), Wind Eye cleave
Attempt 3 - Effin normal eye damage (healing), Chew full fel scythe
Attempt 4 - Black Anguished Spirits, Shage Fel Scythe and Normal eye ticks
Attempt 5 - Reptar eye cleave, Brian Shatter Essence, Glace bonds in helfire
Attempt 6 - Chew Melee and normal scythe before bonds, Oomby normal eye ticks (Healing), Chew Shattered Essence
Attempt 7 - Oomby Bonds 1 shot (on then dead?), Rem Bonds 1 shot(Knocked wrong way), Reptar and Black Nether Rift and Eye cleave
Attempt 8 - Fish, Shage, Avelyth, Arthricqt Anguished Spirits
Attempt 9 - Rem Bonds 1 Shot (way out in bumb fuck), Oomby bonds 1 shot (ran into chew while leaping), Effin too low for helfire (healing)
Attempt 10 - Rem Eye of Guldan Cleave, Wind Eye of Guldan cleave, Khord fel scythe
Attempt 11 - Wind Eye of Guldan Cleave, Chew scythe and melee Rem triggered and died
Attempt 12 - Reptar bonds 1 shot, Wind Bonds 1 shot both middle of nowhere
Attempt 13 - Chew Anguished spirit and fel scythe, Ooomby Eye cleave and Emopowered Bonds (stood in someone's), Wind, Lenoratte, Sheldrom Eye cleave same set of eyes
Attempt 14 - Effin bonds of fate off side, Oomby eye cleave, Brian Shattered Essence
Attempt 15 - Sheldrom Bonds, Black Bonds - bonds are too spread - Sheldrom eye cleave
Attempt 16 - Shage Bonds doesn't have teleport dies, Glace helfire stands in it - boss also moved late for next set, Wind Bonds spread to high fuck again
Attempt 17 - Avelyth and Lenoratte bonds - too spread
Attempt 18 - Rem knocked off side with bonds, Jake died to bonds (out of range of bubble?), Lenoratte knocked off side with bonds
Attempt 19 - Oomby eye of guldan cleave (x3), Wind Eye of Guldan Cleave, Effin eye of guldan (normal damage)
Attempt 20 - Chew, Jake, Rem all off sides with bonds....lol?
Attempt 21 - Brian off side with bonds
Attempt 22 - Rem bonds of fel (out of range of bubble?), Both Tanks Chew - Full Scythe, Brian Shatter Essence
Attempt 23 - Brian full scythe 1 shot, Empowered eye killed 3 Black, Glace, Sheldrom
Attempt 24 - Arthricqt Bonds forgot immunity, Brian Bonds off side

Item - Totals deaths - contributed to # wipes
Bonds - 26 - 15
Eyes - 11 - 8
Anguished Spirits - 5 - 3
Healing - 5 - 4
Tank Screw Ups - 9 - 8
Tanks off side - 3 - 3

Other - 7 - 5
Shage scythe and eye ticks
Khord Fel Scythe
Rem running over Chew to scythe
Glace Helfire standing in it
Empowered Eye kills 3

Post edited, no ill intention was meant by it. Objective was explained lower still looking for feedback.

[Dracodraco]

<Snip infodump>

Now, my raid leader and I got into it about strat, but I really feel like we're fundamentally doing things horribly wrong.

We're lusting at the top to try to beat 2nd add. I know, not the preferred strat here but we have issues with healing so skipping the dicey part and empowered eye was our goal. We're close, but I think we lose out on pushing due to the extra movement we do with helfire, more on that in a minute.

As already stated previously, if you're lacking healing, beating the 2nd add won't help you as long as you end up having to do fifth eye in P2. Healing in P1 is MILES easier than healing in P2. Everything's scripted, the only thing you ever need raid cds for is the hellfire, and even that isn't major (have your resto shaman spam chain heal on the bait-group to keep them alive during the drops and GG).

First, I feel like we do bonds horribly wrong. His preferred way is to knock the first two sets through the ranged off to the left instead of towards the middle of the room. I've showed countless videos on our forums showing that the majority of guilds clump immediately behind the boss and get knocked to the middle. He claims that doesn't happen...this is the preferred method yes? He also claims that spreading using the boss in the middle of the formation would be a lot more movement than what we're doing.

If you don't group up for the knockback in melee, there's all chance that you'll end up with people too far apart to use the anti-magic zone properly, resulting in having to soak and take the 10M hit instead of just nulling it. Clumping up is not possible on a few of the bonds, and for those you should apply immunities where possible so you can soak as many without having to stress with taking the 10m hits.

Which leads me to our Helfire strat. Right now we clump max range then drop 3 right towards the boss. We then move the boss a metric ton to have enough room to do that again causing healers to move, tank placement since we're breaking scythes as our bear tank and healers couldn't figure out a way to solo them. My preferred way would be to make a line from middle to edge of room dropping 3 there and then just moving the spread formation up enough to drop the next three, or the common cluster pattern where you drop them in a triangle and then move just enough to drop next 3 the opposite pattern. Those are the most common approaches yes? Method did the line, but we don't have the dps/healing/performance to pull off all this movement.

Moving the boss everytime a hellfire drops to max range for the melee is totally fine. This minimizes hellfire damage on the melee, and lets healers 100% focus ranged. Boss should always be kept +20 yards from the latest hellfire to keep damage minimal. Doesn't matter where you drop them, ranged will be moving either way, and melee don't care. You're lacking the DPS/healing performance to do this because of ONE thing -
You are trying to beat a STUPIDLY tight timer by beating that second add, which you really shouldn't care about. As soon as you stop being stupid and just deal with it, you gain another minute or two of P1 time meaning people can stop tunneling the boss and focus on mechanics instead.

Tanking - there were a lot of tank mess ups, including myself with not popping CDs and missing taunt, but I think breaking scythe every 30-50 energy while taunting for bonds while raid calling is too much. Anyone have access to their guardian to ask how they solo is. It would make the fight significantly easier, otherwise I'll use what I got from the warrior forums and indomitable double stam solo it.

Don't know about bears soloing. Our brewmaster+paladin just soaks them every 30-60; avg hit of 4M on brewmaster (that gets staggered), and 2M on paladin. BRM also solo'd one (probably while fel add was up) that hit for 12M, which is why his avg is so high, but that's a single one.

Every time I bring up these issues it turns into a fight, we've already been stubborn and wasted time on other bosses. How can I best approach this with him, and am I even in the right with how we should change the strat to help us?

Thanks for taking the time to look!

Chew~

Tell him to fuck right the hell off if he's stubborn and pick proper tactics to start with if he wants to progress quickly.

[Awsumpossum]

Help! We seem hopelessly stuck in Phase 1 and after getting through Elisande in 83 pulls and basically a week of progress, this is disheartening to still be in Guldan phase 1 after a week.

Idk what phase 1 progression is like with all the trait changes and inflation, but it's pretty standard to spend a raid week getting slaughtered in phase 1 to stupid shit so I wouldn't be too discouraged.

On the Brightside, phase 3 was by far the easiest to learn and get through. So, expect to spend a decent amount of time in phases 1 and 2. If I had a dollar for each time our raid leader said, "watch your tanks, don't get scythed" during the pushbacks of phase 2 and someone immediately died to that exact mechanic...well, I'd be able to buy something. At the very least some bath towels.

[Emancptr]

Tanking - there were a lot of tank mess ups, including myself with not popping CDs and missing taunt, but I think breaking scythe every 30-50 energy while taunting for bonds while raid calling is too much. Anyone have access to their guardian to ask how they solo is. It would make the fight significantly easier, otherwise I'll use what I got from the warrior forums and indomitable double stam solo it.

I mean he has Dual Determination and Archimonde's Hatred Reborn + 3 external Cds. Solo soaking scythes would not be hard at all. He has 2-3 extra cooldowns than he needs. Here are combinations that survive 100% fel scythe.

SI+MoU
Bark+MoU+Trinket (AHR or Exoskeleton)
MoU+Sacrifice (usually do trinket here to help paladin but you'l live without)

Bark+MoU+Trinket is up for every other one (1, 3, 5, etc.)
Use external Bark before external sac (Paladins will definitely notice when they have sac up)

The only hard part about solo-ing the fel scythe is understanding when he's actually going to cast it. But it almost always happens after he does other things so just be patient and wait to use/call for cds (save a SI as a backup at all times). And always just 1 frenzied after it happens and you're insta back to full.

[Magicme]

Tanking - there were a lot of tank mess ups, including myself with not popping CDs and missing taunt, but I think breaking scythe every 30-50 energy while taunting for bonds while raid calling is too much. Anyone have access to their guardian to ask how they solo is. It would make the fight significantly easier, otherwise I'll use what I got from the warrior forums and indomitable double stam solo it.

I've done this fight as guardian and brewmaster. It's easy to solo soak as a guardian, although I'd argue it's easier and safer just to proc periodically. Don't proc at 30 unless you're aiming to reset before the transition or something, aim for 60-70. If you're having trouble remembering to proc because you're focussed on other things, just have your druid call when you should proc. This will help with your other issue, which is your druid not having MoU up for each scythe. Letting him call when to proc will make sure he has proper defensives up. Just make sure he knows that its magic damage.

[Deleted]

This might be a clueless question but the felbonds... where does the knockback aim you to?

Sometimes I feel it's where my back was turned... sometimes I feel he himself is the epicenter (I basically make sure I cover both of these now).

Biggest issue is with the DPS/Healers getting too spread, even when somewhat close together they get knocked a miles from eachother... Someone just suggested it's based on the location of his hands... now afaik he actually turns when he finishes the cast.

Anyone have any insights on this matter?

[Emancptr]

I don't think anyone knows exactly how it works. Here's a couple of observations that i've had:

1) You're not always knocked back straight (~30 degree arc that you can be knocked back in)
2) Gul'dan prefers to "spread out" the knock-backs. I have never seen all 4 knock-backs land within a small area. The ~30 degree arc gives the game room to spread out players even if they were initially stacked perfectly.
3) I've heard the knockback based on the location of his hand (i.e. the location of the tank being knocked back). I think this has some effect on the knockback/spread of the other players, but it's minimal.

Personally, the biggest effect we saw in minimizing spread of the bonds was ensuring our tank was point as far as possible from the rest of the group. This meant that our tank wasn't "taking up a spot" in the middle of the group that forced the ranged/melee bonds to be more spread out.

[Chewtoy]

It appears what I wrote was taken out of context. I was just pointing out there was a conflict, and I wanted to figure out how to better resolve it moving forward so there wasn't more. The advice I was seeking on that is that I'm sure GM, Raid Leaders, Officers and others haven't seen eye to eye on strategy, recruitment, what have you before and I was curious as to how others worked through it without it turning into a fight. Maybe should be it's own post in this forum and not piggy backed off Guldan strategy. It was in no way meant to demean my current raid leader as he's my best friend and someone I trust wholeheartedly. So, if anyone has feedback on how to work things out when it gets heated I'd love to hear it. As I appreciate the feedback Draco but telling him to fuck off to progress quickly isn't my style

Basically it came down to
Lust at the top - I know not preferred here. We may concede add and do it that way this week. That was an idea I threw out as a Fused member told us to go that way. Then again they 5 heal now and push without add....so yeah, may not be doable for us for first kill even though we're close. All my responsibility for suggesting it.

Bonds - Do people usually have everyone clump and send them to the middle, or do you clump and try to send them off to a side?

Helfire - Which of the three common strategies is least movement and highest dps? Which do you find works best for you? Looking back and seeing other ways to handle it would you have chosen something different? The 3 main strategies I've seen are drop 3 in a line running at the boss and moving him further, Drop 3 in a line perpendicular to the boss then adjusting camp for enough room to drop the next 3, dropping 3 like the little 3 section elbow piece in tetris and then dropping the next 3 to fit into it so it basically makes a 2 by 3 rectangle.

Tank strategy - do you solo soak, why? What does it make easier? If you break scythe - who calls it or watches it, when do you do it? As a prot warrior I'm using the majority of my stuff at not dying to bonds, but I guess I could go indomitable and double pain sup stack to break them more reliably.

Thanks for the feedback!

- - - Updated - - -

the only thing you ever need raid cds for is the hellfire, and even that isn't major (have your resto shaman spam chain heal on the bait-group to keep them alive during the drops and GG).

What do you mean by bait groups? Does he have a tendency to pick people if they're further out?

[Dracodraco]

What do you mean by bait groups? Does he have a tendency to pick people if they're further out?

Only ranged can get targetted by hellfire. Thus, "bait group" is your ranged, usually a single group so it's easy for healers to see who they need to spam. Melee shouldn't ever take more than 33% dmg per hellfire-ball due to distance, so can safely just ignore them while you spam the ranged (who should take 45-50% dmg per hellfire ball).