The Mage solo thread, because who needs a DK ?

[isaac2314]

Guide pending. Now, excuse me while I deal with wiping on Mythic Archimonde for four hours by punching a dummy.

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OK, calmer now. 49 Traits, 907 ilvl, 6% Leech, Prydaz/Belo'vir's, still on PTR. Major points:

- Use Cinderstorm. From my experience it's the best 100 talent to push all the DPS checks.

(PS: Also, use Mark of the Heavy Hide. I personally think the survival gain you get from it far outweighs the DPS loss, but I have no proof.)

- P1: Drink Prolonged Power, pull, Time Warp and burn. The goal is to push p2 before 3rd Combo. If that fails, either use Invisibility (see below) or reset. Stand between boss and purple pillar except during Felseeker.

- P2: Again, goal is to push p3 before 3rd Combo. If you can do it in p1 you can definitely do it in p2. Stand between boss and purple pillar except during Felseeker.

- P3: Place boss between purple pillar and you. Let first Combo push you to the center, then place yourself between boss and purple pillar. Try get knocked into the pillar during Shadowforce (for whatever reason boss no longer does Gaze in p3 and you generally need to use Blink to heal yourself.) Following Saorix's advice, I used Invisibility about a second before Combo starts and successfully avoided the Blast entirely, although I'm not sure about the details since the second time I succeeded I got the kill. You shouldn't need to see more than 4 Combos to end P3, but in case you do use Ice Block for 5th Combo. Cauterize might save you at 6th Combo if Prydaz comes off cooldown right as you Cauterizes (you get stunned and cannot blink for ~3s), but that sounds really unreliable.

Generally, this is a DPS check but you also need to not be an idiot (like me) and get knocked off the platform (which was about 75% of my wipes, I think.)

Archimonde's a real pain. I really hope it's doable before ToS drops.

[Araitik]

Glad to see you are still in the business isaac

I attempted Mythic Archimonde today (on live), my conclusions, after one attempt:

I reached 44%, which is beginning of last phase. I saw the nether !
My ilvl was 913, with legendary robe and belt, 6% Leech, and a 929 weapon with 49 traits.
Biggest sources of damage are autoattacks, Death brands and Allure of Flames.
Allure of flames deals huge chunks of damage (upwards of 2M) but Doomfire doesn't seem to hurt much. Soaking looks like the go-to strat.
Phases 1 and 2 are all about kiting. Facetank only if you have no choice.
The build must be centered around movement. IF, FS, LB, Kindling. You won't stand still for long enough to use anything else.

Phase 1

Nuke hard, kite the boss, priority : Doomfire > Deathcaller > Archimonde
Update: Don't soak too much, it deals the same damage anyway.

Phase 2

Continue kiting, Overfiend & Deathcaller > other adds > Archimonde

Phase 3 (previsions)

Finger of Death seems to deal the same damage as a melee attack, but is probably cast faster.
Update: Bad idea, Finger of Death stacks a debuff. 7+ stacks is unsurvivable and reached very quickly.
Don't stack conduits.
Edit: Conduits exploding only deal ~350k damage, which is not a big deal. Try to space them as much as you can though.
Mark of the Legion deals 1.5 million damage (this was actually my killing blow). This looks like a major problem, especially since we are forced to keep one Blink to avoid getting launched off the platform.
I don't know about orbs or infernals, but they should not be a major issue.
Edit: Infernals have 1.5M HP, they just melt.

Just for fun, and to see how much time it takes us to get a kill, my first P3 :



Good luck to anyone attempting him

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Update: 40%, died on first source of chaos.

I used Ice block on the first Mark of the Legion, but I doubt this is survivable in the long run.

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Update : 23% ! We're definitely getting somewhere.

Infernals are no big deal. Even if they pulse, it only deals 50k / tick / infernal, and around 2/3rd misses due to level difference.
Void Stars can and must be dealth with quickly. They have 335k hps which is negligible.
Mark of the Legion deals a huge chunk of damage, 1.5M, but occurs rarely enough that it should not be the major issue I was afraid of.
The biggest problem right now is the most unexpected one : the Source of Chaos. They push you too far really fast, and if you cannot kill them in <5s or Blink back in melee, it's game over. It has 4.7M HP and must die as fast as possible. I took Meteor basically just for this.

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19% .. slow and steady. I went to take my 50th point to improve Cautering Blink in the meantime.

Infernals can probably be completely ignored.
Edit: Not completely, but they are not a priority target

[isaac2314]

Daaaaaamn it, I was hoping you wouldn't be rushing Mythic Archimonde too!
I personally found Infernals to be really dangerous, though. At the point where he spawns 6 Infernals in one cast it becomes dangerous, both in the damage and in the difficulty in getting rid of it. Sadly, at 1.45M nothing gives us enough damage to one-shot them when there are, say, 10 of them in one spot.

Also, I see that you also took <6 minutes to reach p3? It's probably inevitable if you need to kite to survive (which I also did to some extent), but it's really unreasonably long and makes me wonder if we can even kill Archimonde before his infinite infernal enrage.

Have you tried using invisibility on Source or Stars? Rogue kill suggests that it should work, but no idea how in detail.

PS: I actually used Prydaz, too, which should make kiting mostly unnecessary but I suck. I've tried ditching Prydaz to maximize damage but never got past p2 without it. God, can we just agree to both not attempt this boss before Concordance? Hours of attempts and only 11% best to show for it.

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Fuck this. Whatever. Uninstalling.
(PS: at 8% Leech you don't have to bring Prydaz along, which should drastically lower the chance of being overwhelmed by Infernals since you can use another legendary that actually gives you damage. Personally used Chest/Belt combo too.)

[Araitik]

Invisibility does exactly what you would expect : despawn the boss. It was a lost attempt anyway, but now we know.

Infernals are indeed a huge problem, if there are 4 of them and you don't crit enough, it's game over. Their AoE misses a lot fortunately, but together they hit for as much as Archimonde himself.

All in all, Sources of Chaos are still the biggest issue due to the tremendous pushback speed, and their relatively high health. I have found a semi-consistent way of dealing with them, but it's far from perfect.

Also, I've reduced my kiting in P1/P2, you can't really die anyway due to the insane heal, so I'm facetanking a lot more. I gained 60 to 90s, which is appreciable.

I estimate than in P3, it takes 1 minute to remove 10% from the boss, so theoretically it's doable, given good RNG.

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AND DOWN GOES THE DEFILER !



The kill was incredibly close, but my strategy paid off : I ditched the belt for Darckli's, and talented Alextraza's Fury. All of a sudden, the Void stars just cease to be a problem : the 2 in melee usually dies to Ignite spread or a quick Fire Blast, and the other 3 get oneshotted by a Dragon Breath. This also gets handy on Infernals. Dragon Breath is my 3rd source of damage on the kill.

The second thing I did was use Pharamere's Forbidden Grimoire for the Source of Chaos : they do 1M+ if it crits, coupled to the all-crit Dragon Breath, and there is only around 1M left to dps, which is easily done. If all else fails, Ice Block and wait for Ignite to tick, which I did once.

I'm not gonna lie, I legitimately screamed in front of my screen at 3AM

[klaps_05]

Is there a way to go to specific bosses in mythic HFC or do you have to run it all from start each time?

[Araitik]

Is there a way to go to specific bosses in mythic HFC or do you have to run it all from start each time?

There are quests exactly like in Nighthold, where you have to defeat specific bosses 4 times (in HFC's case, Mannoroth, quest is http://www.wowhead.com/quest=39502/the-fel-spire and Gorefiend with http://www.wowhead.com/quest=39499/well-of-souls) to unlock portals to upper HFC.

These quests are available in all difficulties, so a complete access requires 4x kills of both bosses in Normal, Heroic, and Mythic.

[Veiled Shadow]

Is there a way to go to specific bosses in mythic HFC or do you have to run it all from start each time?

Assuming you completed the required quests (killing Gorefiend and Mannoroth 4 times each, subsequently) you can skip straight to Mannoroth if you were interested in farming the mount.

Also, congratulations on the kill Araitik! Well done for sure

[isaac2314]

Dang. Was really hoping I'd get all the major HFC kills.
But grats Araitik! Very well done!
The Grimoire idea is pretty nice, although I don't think it's strictly necessary. Most things are probably like that in this fight though - not really necessary, but fight becomes harder without them. And at some point you slip because they add up and you die.
I didn't want to use Helm partly because I had a 925 helm already and because I don't see how it helps much since it doesn't oneshot Infernals. However, I see now that it's far more valuable to make sure you can consistently kill Sources/Stars. It's definitely possible to deal with all of them without Helm/Belt/etc. (I pushed Archimonde to 11% once. In Prydaz/Belo'vir's. And died when I wasted every Fire Blast on Infernals without killing them and getting pushed off by 4th Source) but it's very unreliable and a waste of your time.
Although, yeah, I agree with you that killing Infernals in time (esp. with waves of 5 or more) is also a matter of luck.

(If only I am more skilled or more geared, but blah.)
(Trying very hard to not think about the 6 hours of pulls wasted)
(Fails and screams)

Anyway, do you think you'll try Nythendra next? Or other HFC bosses? Blackhand?





PS:

There are quests exactly like in Nighthold, where you have to defeat specific bosses 4 times (in HFC's case, Mannoroth, quest is http://www.wowhead.com/quest=39502/the-fel-spire and Gorefiend with http://www.wowhead.com/quest=39499/well-of-souls) to unlock portals to upper HFC.

These quests are available in all difficulties, so a complete access requires 4x kills of both bosses in Normal, Heroic, and Mythic.

You only need to do the quests on Mythic to enjoy the bypass on all difficulties, just like the Nighthold quest.



PPS:
Out of curiosity, DID you do Mannoroth? Was wondering how you dealt with 3rd Blasts. Enough DPS to push it, Invisibility, or some other method?


PPPS:
Kil'rogg and Zakuun were done on Heroic a long time ago, actually.


PPPPS:
Did you use Mark of the Heavy Hide?

[Deleted]

Are these bosses doable without leech gear? I'm very unlucky with getting these pieces :v

[isaac2314]

Are these bosses doable without leech gear? I'm very unlucky with getting these pieces :v

HFA/Fel Reaver/Kormrok's doable, Hellfire High Council is probably doable although it will be painful, Iskar's doable, and Mannoroth is probably also doable.
Archimonde, I'd bet against it. You'd need Prydaz/Belo'vir's to go without any leech. Doing Archimonde without any DPS legendary is probably possible but very frustrating.

Either way, most of these bosses (Council, Iskar, Mannoroth) would need the Neck/Chest combo, and HFA also needs Ring/Helm combo.

(Out of curiosity, how bad is your leech situation? I have ~4% leech on 880+ gear but I think that's already on the lucky side.)

[Deleted]

(Out of curiosity, how bad is your leech situation? I have ~4% leech on 880+ gear but I think that's already on the lucky side.)

0 leech gear, even 850 pieces in bank. And another question: how do you avoid stacks on mannoroth with invi? Every time I try doing that boss resets. Maybe bosses will be doable without leech as my ilvl is a little higher than yours(914)

[isaac2314]

0 leech gear, even 850 pieces in bank. And another question: how do you avoid stacks on mannoroth with invi? Every time I try doing that boss resets. Maybe bosses will be doable without leech as my ilvl is a little higher than yours(914)

To be honest I don't really know either - what I posted earlier is all that I've noticed. I think I pressed Invisibility one or two seconds before combo begins, but I'm not sure on the timing at all. There is a possibility it only works for Phase 3 Blasts.

PS: ah, that IS tough luck. Well, at least ToS has really good raid healer trinkets so that we don't have to hunt for leech anymore?

PPS: boss should be doable without leech at that ilvl with both defensive legendary, yeah. Remember Mark of the Heavy Hide!

PPPS: Ice Block in Phase 3 MIGHT also prevent the application of Blast debuffs. Might. I was too busy DPSing to notice.
The way I'd do it is to Time Warp on p1, push p2 before 3rd Blast, and do whatever you can do to survive the long p3.
So in p3 you'd facetank, facetank, Ice Block, facetank, facetank, maybe invis, facetank, facetank. If you can push p2 before 3rd blast you can kill boss before 9th/6th Blast in p3 for sure.

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Small update: Ana-Mouz is definitely killable as Fire with good gear as long as you get at least the Suramar health buffs. She does not MC you if you are alone and when not in melee she hits for maybe 100k a second (not sure if that's actually lighter than her melee hits), not sure about her tank debuff because more people always show up before I get to that part.

Maybe I'll try on Tuesday morning again, maybe not.



Update: Sorry, but tried again and for some reason it seems to be Frost that prevents you from getting Mind Controlled; even when alone you still get MC'ed as Fire - that is, unless there is someone secretly hitting the boss too that I didn't see. Or maybe this boss just doesn't make sense /shrug.

[Araitik]

Archimonde Mythic



Enjoy the video

Dang. Was really hoping I'd get all the major HFC kills.
But grats Araitik! Very well done!
The Grimoire idea is pretty nice, although I don't think it's strictly necessary. Most things are probably like that in this fight though - not really necessary, but fight becomes harder without them. And at some point you slip because they add up and you die.
I didn't want to use Helm partly because I had a 925 helm already and because I don't see how it helps much since it doesn't oneshot Infernals. However, I see now that it's far more valuable to make sure you can consistently kill Sources/Stars. It's definitely possible to deal with all of them without Helm/Belt/etc. (I pushed Archimonde to 11% once. In Prydaz/Belo'vir's. And died when I wasted every Fire Blast on Infernals without killing them and getting pushed off by 4th Source) but it's very unreliable and a waste of your time.
Although, yeah, I agree with you that killing Infernals in time (esp. with waves of 5 or more) is also a matter of luck.

(If only I am more skilled or more geared, but blah.)
(Trying very hard to not think about the 6 hours of pulls wasted)
(Fails and screams)

You put up a lot of competition my friend, and you should be proud ! Also you are right, the Grimoire was probably not that useful (I even forgot to use it a couple times on the kill) but it was a fail-safe in case of bad crit.

Anyway, do you think you'll try Nythendra next? Or other HFC bosses? Blackhand?

Blackhand is in my head right now, but I don't have access to him like I have for Archimonde. HFC is probably what comes next. I don't know about anything Legion-related.

PS: You only need to do the quests on Mythic to enjoy the bypass on all difficulties, just like the Nighthold quest.

I didn't know that. Thank you for the precision !

PPS:
Out of curiosity, DID you do Mannoroth? Was wondering how you dealt with 3rd Blasts. Enough DPS to push it, Invisibility, or some other method?

I didn't, I had a saved raid ID from like 2 months ago that I kept extending since then. I tried Mythic Mannoroth back then but with the ~900 gear that I had then it was impossible, and Archimonde was destroying me in less than a minute. So I kept the raid ID waiting for the day when I could kill him

PPPS:
Kil'rogg and Zakuun were done on Heroic a long time ago, actually.

Updated the spreadsheet, sorry for this

PPPPS:
Did you use Mark of the Heavy Hide?

I would've probably ended up doing it, but the kill came first.

(Out of curiosity, how bad is your leech situation? I have ~4% leech on 880+ gear but I think that's already on the lucky side.)

I'll also answer this question, because I actually got really lucky with Leech this expansion compared with Draenor : I have the T18 cloak at 925 ilvl, a Crit/Mastery 890 neck, 900 Crit / Mastery Boots and 900 Mastery / Versa bracers, all with Leech. Coupled with Belo'virs and Cauterizing Blink, Mage survivability is better than it always were before.

[isaac2314]

Nice video as always! Also thanks very much for the acknowledgement, appreciated.
It's still strange to think of Archimonde as essentially being an add control fight (honestly, just like the Fire mage artifact challenge) but that's the impression of everything I've seen.

As for BRF bypass (directly sends you to Blackhand), it should only take 5 weeks to get it - one week to get quest, 4 weeks to get items. Although admittedly that's a very long time. And a pain to consistently find a group with Mind Controls.
(Although it shouldn't be too hard to find someone with the bypass?)

Good luck on HFC bosses! Not very sure I'll do too much myself before I'm geared in heroic ToS.

[enak101]

Heard people mentioning that the absorb shield you put on yourself with barrier is much larger in frost spec than in fire, does cauterizing blink heal basically close the gap between the 2 absorb shields here? Would be kinda interesting to see some frost solo tbh but I see why fire is doing well anyway, if only the frost pet was more useful I guess.

[isaac2314]

Heard people mentioning that the absorb shield you put on yourself with barrier is much larger in frost spec than in fire, does cauterizing blink heal basically close the gap between the 2 absorb shields here? Would be kinda interesting to see some frost solo tbh but I see why fire is doing well anyway, if only the frost pet was more useful I guess.

Hi and welcome!

To answer your question - at first, yes. With your artifacts at around the same ilvl and traits, your self-healing looks like this:
Fire - 64k HPS
Frost - 34k HPS
Arcane - 24k HPS
At ~905 ilvl and 3811k total health (this is without using any talent - not that the talents change the numbers too much except for maybe Arcane anyway.)
Obviously the numbers will be much lower at lower ilvls, but at default states Fire generally beats Frost and Arcane in terms of self-healing.

Basically this. Fire self-healing scales off HP while Frost scales off spellpower. My Frost Artifact ilvl is as good as my Fire one, so its lack of traits don't matter quite so much (well, it still misses 1 level on Shield of Alodi, so it's really 64k versus 40k.)
Since HP seems to have better growth than spellpower due to paragon traits, Fire might be expected to become even better as the tier goes on.
So yes, Fire self-heals with Blink while Frost self-heals with Barrier.

Although Frost pet may yet be still useful - one potential strategy I have in mind for Mythic Zakuun is for water elemental to tank for the first 30 second to avoid first Cleave, Mirror Image for second Cleave and burst boss down before third Cleave (since there is an entire intermission phase during that period.)

[Araitik]

Heard people mentioning that the absorb shield you put on yourself with barrier is much larger in frost spec than in fire, does cauterizing blink heal basically close the gap between the 2 absorb shields here? Would be kinda interesting to see some frost solo tbh but I see why fire is doing well anyway, if only the frost pet was more useful I guess.

The Frost pet is useless. It was somewhat good when you could heal him (that's how I soloed Algalon 25 in MoP) but now it just dies in seconds.

Basically this. Fire self-healing scales off HP while Frost scales off spellpower. My Frost Artifact ilvl is as good as my Fire one, so its lack of traits don't matter quite so much (well, it still misses 1 level on Shield of Alodi, so it's really 64k versus 40k.)
Since HP seems to have better growth than spellpower due to paragon traits, Fire might be expected to become even better as the tier goes on.
So yes, Fire self-heals with Blink while Frost self-heals with Barrier.

Although Frost pet may yet be still useful - one potential strategy I have in mind for Mythic Zakuun is for water elemental to tank for the first 30 second to avoid first Cleave, Mirror Image for second Cleave and burst boss down before third Cleave (since there is an entire intermission phase during that period.)

This.

The problem with Frost is that it has no self-heal, only absorbs. Problem with Ice Barrier is that the spell is on a long cooldown, and usually it is depleted long before it comes back up. In the meantime, you have nothing to heal the damage.

You can partially solve this with Leech, but you will need a lot of it to compensate.

To put that into perspective : as Fire, I can sustain 150k to 160k HPS in maximum survivability build (Belo'vir's, 8% Leech, and 5 points in Cauterizing Blink)

~30% of that healing is Belo'vir's
~30% is Leech
~30% is Cauterizing Blink
Blazing barrier only amounts to around 5% of my total HPS.

Ice Barrier absorbs approximately twice the amount Blazing Barrier does, but you can see that it's far from enough to compensante for the loss of Cauterizing Blink.

To have the same sustainability as a Frost mage, you would need around 15% Leech, which is a huge amount. I had that amount at the very end of WoD, and it took Kazzak's trinket to reach there. 15% Leech today is only attainable if you have ~8 pieces with high ilvl and Leech, which would take an insane luck to get.

Add to all of this that Frost cruely lacks mobility, which means no kiting at all, while Fire has a bunch of movement speed tied to Scorch, and you see why Fire is and will probably stay the best spec to solo high-end content for a long time.

[enak101]

Thanks for the explanation, makes sense. Good luck with further solos.

[isaac2314]

Small update: killed Apocron on PTR. Without using any exotic buffs (I only used Sylvan Elixir in addition to the usual raid buffs) it's extremely easy with Neck/Chest (I was actually using my AoE talents), doable with Chest/Other and probably really hard but still possible without either Chest or Neck.

The strategy was basically like what Araitik used for Kosumoth: kite with Scorch. Sometimes he doesn't cast as many Hellfire Missiles, so you'll have to be more careful or use Ice Block, but otherwise it's perfectly possible to fight him without getting hit once.

Somewhat disappointing, though - took ~15 minutes and couldn't face tank. Was hoping that this would be proof of concept for soloing Legion bosses but it looks like we'd need to wait a bit into ToS.


Note: There are actually maybe not much less people killing Apocron on PTR too. On the high-population server there are even people farming him right now and dropping Sentinax beacons and killing Nether Portal rares. It's hypocritical, but what the hell.

[isaac2314]

Tried Upper HFC (and Kil'rogg), no kills, but some notes:

- Kil'rogg: He can do up to 4 debuffs before 1st vision and as few as 2, not sure why, but some people theorize that the more you let him hit you in melee the more likely it is that he decreases his debuff casts. Mirror Image/Ice Block+Water Elemental works for de-stacking. On my best pulls I got MC'ed about 2 minutes into the fight and boss was around ~40% health. Probably doable some time after ToS. Chest/Neck.
(Also, adds. 2 Hulking Terrors are a wipe, any Fel Blood Surge is a wipe, etc. Frost should be able to do this boss but Fire just feels safer in terms of killing all the adds on time.)
PS: Demon Hunters can shamelessly avoid all debuffs. As far as I know, not replicable with mages.

- Zakuun: Playing Frost is the safest bet. Facepull him, have water elemental hit him before 1st Soul Cleave, Ice Block 2nd Soul Cleave, and you should get to 30%. Since Disarmed phase hits really hard I usually use another Ice Block right after 1st Seeds and push boss before 3rd Cleave, but it should also be possible to just tank the boss and save that Ice Block for something else like 3rd Cleave. Best pull is around 15%. Chest/Bracers, although Chest/Neck is a lot safer.

PS: If necessary, Mirror Images can be used for another Soul Cleave, but you shouldn't need that and losing that much DPS isn't generally worth it anyway.

PPS: Mirror Image eliminates your threat for 40 seconds (like Fade. It also goes back afterwards. Mentioned earlier here), well after your images would have died under normal solo conditions. If you are wondering why Zakuun is killing your Water Elemental, this is why.
Theoretically it's possible in this way to avoid 2 Cleaves in a row: for example WE for 1st Cleave, Ice Block 2nd Cleave, Mirror Image 3rd Cleave, Image threat drop + WE 4th Cleave. If you really want I guess you can instead use Image for the first two, double Ice Block for the second two and Mirror Image again for the 3rd two. Although, if you are seeing 4th Cleave or more I don't think you are surviving the 30% enrage.

PPPS: Tested Mirror Image on some Broken Isles rares, reasonbly sure that Mirror Image is more like a threshold - for 40 seconds you need to do at least 90M threat (however much that is) to get aggro, otherwise your images (and other players and your water elemental) have more threat priority than you, so it shouldn't be possible for you to regain aggro for 40 seconds after using Mirror Image, like Araitik claimed. That also applies to Water Elementals summoned after using Mirror Image (or players butting in after you pulled rare.)



- Xhul'horac: Still the same. Killing adds quickly gives you some time but I still haven't managed below 15%. Chest/Helm.

- Socrethar/Velhari: Ice Block+Water Elemental should help with Reverberating Blow, but I suspect there are too many of them for that to work well. Same goes for Velhari debuffs although that's more doable.