Mythic KJ Help

[Drac00La]

Hi everyone!

Our guild finally managed to kill avatar, so now we are looking forward to trying KJ himself (really not ). Previously I've read a lot of useful info about hard bosses in threads by other people, but I guess now it's my turn to create one and ask for advices.

Tank setup
We have following tank "roster": monk + bear/war + bear/dk. Looking at kills videos, seems like having bdk makes second intermission a joke. I feel like it's more valuable than second stampeding roar from second bear. What are your thoughts?

Healing
We have 2 hpallies, 2 rdruids, monk and shaman available (we also can switch Shpriest to discipline, but I feel like it's not the best idea). We are currently considering 5 healing it, as it looks more safe, and it seems like with current gear there are not that many dps checks left in this fight.

Armageddon
Small: assign people to quadrants, use WA to link your stacks in chat. CoS can remove stacks (and maybe some other immunities)?
Big: for our setup (2 hpallies, 2 mages, 2-3 hunters) I feel like it's best to immune one, and make third tank (he will be either offspec or alt) soak the other. From the vids seems like most people soak both with tanks, but I think it just overcomplicates figth with boss movement and risks tank death.

Bursting dreadflame
Just run to your assigned quadrant? There is one overlap with bursting right after knockback, we use roar for it?

Focused dreadflame
Soak with rogues + tanks, doesn't seems too hard. One overlap with knockback right after focused, have to kill the add in time and dispel the tank to make it easier?

Knockbacks
Dispel the tank or use lock portal (or your class utility) to overcome it. I heard there is a macro to mouseover click the portal, what the point of it?

Third phase
For darkness of thousand souls 5 (?) people have to stand outside and get 2 stacks.
For obelisks place markers on the ground. Are there any WAs to make it easier to find the safespot?
For sphere, make kiting rotation. Every third sphere overlaps with obelisks detonation, so it has to be bited before moving to safespot. As far as I know, CoS ignores both the damage and the knockback from the obelisks, so rogues are the best for kiting third sphere?

If I missed something, feel free to add. Thanks in advance and have a nice day!

[Tojara]

A lot of people three tank it now. You don't have to, but it makes it easier to soak the big soaks with less emphasis on using immunities for them (and thus, people can use those immunities for emergency soaking them, or taking off double or triple stacks of the rain). Or just use it if they are in a terrible position for the knock back.

We've only gotten mostly through P2, but the second intermission and the last phase don't look too difficult.

I believe the second intermission use to be thought of as one of the harder parts of the encounter, but I don't think that's true anymore. The balls drop in pre-determined locations now, making it predictable. Blood DK does trivialize it, but from what I've seen, not by a whole lot. Guilds without one (from videos I've watched) will have to deal with a second singularity, while guilds with one usually don't. Again, considering you know where they drop now, it doesn't seem like a deal breaker.

That said I think overall, if you go the three tank route the best comp would be double bear with a blood DK. You get some slight help in the second intermission and you get roars (which are huge) for the times when it really matters. Not that the first intermission is overly difficult, but we would be incredibly consistent with it if we had access to two roars. Won't speak for everybody, but stampeding roar is one of the largest reasons you see so many bear druids (that and they double by having a few outs from the knock backs as well).

I'd three tank it before 5 healing it. There are a few periods where the damage is pretty heavy, but they are literally the only points where healing CDs are generally advised. I imagine near the end of P3 the healing would get hard too.

DPS matters but not too much. Being able to skip the rains after the tank add in P1 is pretty useful, and being able to skip the third tank add and I believe eighth rain in P2 is pretty helpful too. Obviously you can deal with both of these and be fine though.

[Squishei]

With the change to Armageddon range, one roar is sufficient if it means you also get a Blood DK. Learning darkness phase without a blood DK doesn't take long, but it does take extra pulls that are all 8 min+, when otherwise you can just one shot it with a blood DK.

The hardest part without two roars is the intermission.

[Dracodraco]

Buckle up. It's going to be another long one.

Setup -

What combination of tanks/healers you want to run is going to depend fully on your guild. After the nerfs, I wouldn't recommend the standard 2 tanks, 4 healers that people used pre-nerf; There's simply no reason to do so. At no point in the fight is there a DPS check you can beat with an extra DPS, that will decrease the difficulty of the encounter by any significant means. In fact, the only major dps checks are:

1: Beating the third Armageddon in P1 (this one overlaps with a lot of shit). Pre-nerfs, guilds did this by ignoring the tank add and using immunities for the middle-knockback, then killing the add while boss was transitioning. Post nerf, most guilds are good to kill the tank add and use the dispel for the middle-knock in P1 (giving their healers some early practice as well), then pushing the boss directly after.

2: Beating the DPS adds before they kill you. Generally, this means 4 casts per add, with a single one being OK to cast a few extra times (will get into that). I don't know your DPS setup, but it's something to consider.

3: Killing the boss with the third darkness cast in P3 (you can go on for longer, but I'd hazard a guess that if you're only getting to KJ now, you won't be able to keep calm/organized for any longer than to this point. 7x+ obelisks at once is a nightmare).

4: Killing shadowsouls in second intermission. This is a very soft requirement - if you can do them in 1 pushback it gets easier. If you have to do 2, it's no big deal.

So by priority:
Stack classes that obliterate DPS adds.
Stack execute (warriors, shadow priest, affliction locks. Warriors + Aff locks do well on DPS adds, warriors do super well on shadow souls as well, spriest just annihilates P3 damage because it's 3-4 minutes of pure execute).
Don't fall behind on single target to an extent where you can't push P1 quick enough. If you have the DPS to push P1, you have the DPS to push P2 before armageddon #8 (we personally aimed to beat #7), which is fine.

That leaves 3 tanks or 5 healers.

I personally wouldn't recommend a fifth healer. Nothing in this fight is super healing intense apart from the DPS adds, and you're cooldowning the shit out of them anyway. A holy paladin can solo heal the healer adds with AM, and with their mana regen, healers essentially have two full manabars to spend over the encounter. P3 does get healing intense, but the only thing that can kill you (focused dreadflame/dreadburst overlaps) can be cooldowned as they'll be back from DPS adds by then. Anything else is just going to 1 shot you anyway (obelisks, standing wrong etc).

A third tank has a lot of uses. Whether you choose a bear or a DK is up to you. There is however one thing a bear can do that a BDK can't - absolutely bumrush the DPS adds. A bear druid is able to push out as much DPS as most other DPS classes (bar the truly exceptional ones like Moonkins for that specific sort of damage pattern), which means that *when it actually counts*, you're not feeling that you've got a third tank. Here's a breakdown of the dmg from our first kill on the DPS adds, just to prove that I'm not overstating:
https://gyazo.com/e1b908668af2cee3c7b16f738f4f8dc6

the "secret" obviously being Luffas+Incarnation +3x thrash relics (all drops from TOS, so they're "easy" to aquire) and thrash-spam (as the third tank, I was also wearing a 925 Horn of Valor for the +6K agi for the full incarnation duration). A DK will *not* get anywhere near this, so if your issue ends up being add damage, keep this in mind.

If you have two DPS dks, a mass grip is also a lot less useful, as you can accomplish much the same thing with 2x DGs and 2x pet grips anyway.

Either way, the third tanks responsibilities are:
Tanking every Armageddon.
Finding the safe spot in P3 between obelisks.
Kiting the first fire-orb after each Darkness (it doesn't overlap with anything. No sense in making a DPS do that).

It'll also make it a lot easier to coordinate soaks, as instead of teams of 2 soaking every big armageddon, you've got 1 guy doing them all, who can call where (s)he is going, and try to accomodate for the partner to optimise damage. Your third tank is there 100% for support (and to DPS the adds if you need it).


As for healers, a holy paladin is almost mandatory. Their AM makes shorter work of the healer adds than anything else. After that, it it's down to what you feel is the strongest healing roster. Big emphasis on being able to absolutely fucking BURST healing though - the dangerous parts are few and far between, and when they come, you need to go absolutely HAM to top everyone instantly between pulses or risk deaths. For that reason, I'd probably pick either 2x hpally, sham, druid if it was up to me (druid being able to prehot+tranq as their burst healing - MW has a single-use revival that'll maybe counter a very early add-cast).

If you can beat the DPS checks with a fifth healer, add the monk as an oh-shit revival button-masher.


Dreadflames:
Bursting, you just spread and don't overlap. It's very simple. You can roar the one that overlaps with dispel-knock, but with the radius nerf, it's not needed (it is safer). If you have a shaman confident in using wind rush over their leap (so no cheating with the orbs), I'd use wind rush over a roar. Roar has a much wider range so it's better for emergencies, and you're all stacked for the wind rush due to the dispel anyway.

Focused, atleast 4x+target in them to make the damage liveable. Tanks>Rogues>DKs>Warlocks for soaking it, due to durability (AMS for DKS does wonders). Your third tank can be in every one of these, so that's 1 of 4 spots. The overlap is very scary when you see it the first time, but dreadflame will go off a milisecond before the pushback happens, so it's really not anything to worry about. If you dispelled too early and everyone got stacked for the dreadflame, you're dead to the knockback anyway.

P3
You need less people outside the more health the rift has. The rift loses health by eating the fire. Bad kiting = more people out. There's a weakaura (I don't have it, go look for it) that tells you how much HP it has so you can decide how many people to stand outside. We just went with 3x tanks +2x each time for safety though.

Obelisks, unsure if there's any helpful WA's etc; I don't think so. I placed the markers myself, and all I can say is, communicate. The marks likely won't be spot-on, so tell people what obelisks to watch that they're not too close to.

Spheres, your third tank takes orb #1 (it'll spawn right after obelisks, so GTFO as soon as they're fired), W/E takes #2 (your third tank can't, gotta find safespot), and a mobile immunity takes #3 (either a rogue or a hunter. Hunter is safer - turtle lasts 7 seconds versus cloaks ...I want to say 2?). We used mages for #2, as Iceblock is fine to block the dmg from the orb, but really not very useful for kiting the orb around during lasers.
But yea, every third orb will spawn right before the lasers go off, so you bait ~10 yards away, then run to safespot with a roar.


Other things of note:

Most guilds use an ancestral totem to kill off a DPS-add target each time, so they don't spawn the bullet-hell orbs. This way you only have to dodge two sides at once. It's important that he can't ress till his DPS add is dead, though, or he'll still fire orbs.

Aim for 2x knockbacks in shadow phase. It's so much safer than 1x if everyone is prepared to get 2x, and you're spending 8 minutes just getting there. You don't want to wipe because people were unprepared. Drag the boss to where orb #2 spawns right before the intermission, and fight down there. Immune orb #1 however you want (personal, gateway from orb #2 corner out to illidan to refresh buff etc), then run up into the adds for orb #2 while finishing them off. One thing we found initially was that if we had the adds spawn at orb #1 position, everyone was scrambling to get away from there and in position for orb #2 if we were slow, which always led to heavy losses and DPS on adds dropping down.

[Drac00La]

Thank you very much for the great insight guys! Starting our progression tonight, gonna put your advice into practice.

[Deleted]

Either way, the third tanks responsibilities are:
Tanking every Armageddon.
Finding the safe spot in P3 between obelisks.
Kiting the first fire-orb after each Darkness (it doesn't overlap with anything. No sense in making a DPS do that).

It'll also make it a lot easier to coordinate soaks, as instead of teams of 2 soaking every big armageddon, you've got 1 guy doing them all, who can call where (s)he is going, and try to accomodate for the partner to optimise damage. Your third tank is there 100% for support (and to DPS the adds if you need it).

Hey. As a general note, thanks for the extensive post you do in of these threads, it helps guilds like my own a ton!

We had our first full night on KJ with preparation, and managed to get to P2 a few times with nearly the entire raid alive. I am just hijacking the thread, with a few questions to your post.

Third tank - I am currently playing my tank DK as the RL (I play a mage usually). I do not have a druid geared, and we only have 1 DK dps. With only 1 DK dps, I feel like we need the DK more than the druid (Our other tanks are a Druid and a Brewmaster). We also have 2 boomkins, so add dmg was mostly fine.
The DK dps could technically play the tank role as well, but I feel like its decent to be the third tank as a RL, especially in p3. You mention above that you do the kiting of the first orb after each darkness, as well as placing the mark - Doesn't this get super hectic?

Additionally, do you have any tips for placing the markers? I am going to practice in HC before we hit this point on mythic, but I would like not to be the reason why my raid wipes after 7-8 min

As for healers, a holy paladin is almost mandatory. Their AM makes shorter work of the healer adds than anything else. After that, it it's down to what you feel is the strongest healing roster. Big emphasis on being able to absolutely fucking BURST healing though - the dangerous parts are few and far between, and when they come, you need to go absolutely HAM to top everyone instantly between pulses or risk deaths. For that reason, I'd probably pick either 2x hpally, sham, druid if it was up to me (druid being able to prehot+tranq as their burst healing - MW has a single-use revival that'll maybe counter a very early add-cast).

If you can beat the DPS checks with a fifth healer, add the monk as an oh-shit revival button-masher.

Setup wise, I feel like this is our big issue. We do not have a stable holy paladin we can bring. Is this make/break, or do you think we can get by with having a rshaman nearly solo them? Obviously it is less than optimal, but we do not have a MS hpala atm.

- - - Updated - - -

Aim for 2x knockbacks in shadow phase. It's so much safer than 1x if everyone is prepared to get 2x, and you're spending 8 minutes just getting there. You don't want to wipe because people were unprepared. Drag the boss to where orb #2 spawns right before the intermission, and fight down there. Immune orb #1 however you want (personal, gateway from orb #2 corner out to illidan to refresh buff etc), then run up into the adds for orb #2 while finishing them off. One thing we found initially was that if we had the adds spawn at orb #1 position, everyone was scrambling to get away from there and in position for orb #2 if we were slow, which always led to heavy losses and DPS on adds dropping down.

We do not have a warrior, which will be a big nerf to our AoE dps. From most guilds I seen it seems to be no problem to make the adds in 1 knockback, could you elaborate why it was to you?

[Dracodraco]

Hey. As a general note, thanks for the extensive post you do in of these threads, it helps guilds like my own a ton!

We had our first full night on KJ with preparation, and managed to get to P2 a few times with nearly the entire raid alive. I am just hijacking the thread, with a few questions to your post.

Third tank - I am currently playing my tank DK as the RL (I play a mage usually). I do not have a druid geared, and we only have 1 DK dps. With only 1 DK dps, I feel like we need the DK more than the druid (Our other tanks are a Druid and a Brewmaster). We also have 2 boomkins, so add dmg was mostly fine.
The DK dps could technically play the tank role as well, but I feel like its decent to be the third tank as a RL, especially in p3. You mention above that you do the kiting of the first orb after each darkness, as well as placing the mark - Doesn't this get super hectic?

Additionally, do you have any tips for placing the markers? I am going to practice in HC before we hit this point on mythic, but I would like not to be the reason why my raid wipes after 7-8 min

So, for the third tank thing - if you don't need the stampeding roars, a DK is absolutely fine. I'd never recommend 2 tanking it (mostly because this week, while 3 tanking it, we still pushed before second healer adds even spawned by accident. Adding more DPS over a utility-tank is just 1000% wasted at this stage). As long as add damage is fine, the only concern for the third tank is "will stampeding or AOE grip be more useful for my raid". Does your AOE damage struggle if a boomkin has to suicide? It sucks to throw a deep P2 attempt away because of a RNG mark.

As for the third tank being RL, yea, you're right - you have a fair amount of wiggle room to focus on calling stuff. On the other hand, you also won't be able to focus on calling where people need to help soak (EG, if 4x small armageddons spawns in front of the boss, but the 2x big are behind, you are focused on the 2x big). It's a trade off. If you're the best bet for your third tank performance wise, I'd say stick with it.

As for the orb kiting being hectic - not really, no. The timing between each darkness of a thousand souls is:

Darkness.
Tear Rift.
Spawn obelisks (this is where you find safespot and mark).
Spawn fire orb *right after obelisks fire*.
Spawn second fire orb+Spawn second obelisks together. (this is where you find safespot and mark).
Spawn third fire orb *right before* second obelisks fire.

Repeat. Your goal basically is to kite the fire orb until the next one spawns, and if you do that, you won't have any "downtime" on trying to find a safespot for the obelisks. I don't know how good a DK is at kiting, though; I can stampeding roar or cat dash all of my orbs (if I stampeding roar the third orb-spawn baiting, I can roar for my own orb again the second time around, there's ~62 seconds between third orb and fourth orb spawning). You just have wraith walk. I think you'll struggle carrying the orbs into the portal and getting back out without a speed buff, or you'll just not be able to kite it long enough to make it as small as possible. That's just hyperbole from me though; Never tried it.

Tips for placing the marker? Buddy I'd like some myself. I haven't really found a system that works, and it's super fucking stressful knowing it has to be spot-on later in the fight. We got to right before the fourth darkness on a pull this week (went into P3 with 2 people dead and wiped at 10M), and I couldn't find the safespot. I went back with paint afterwards to try and see what I could have done better. This is the result:
https://gyazo.com/44e7f50d4b8f92f30effe3194aa8d28d (blue squares are safespots. Note that the two blue squares that's overlapped by the green ring are not viable safespots, as they are partly covered by the rift and would cause you to get constantly suckered into the damage from it).

After that I plain out said that I'm not good enough to find a safespot in that mess; Either we kill it by the obelisks that comes after the third darkness, or finding a safespot is pretty much a gamble (note that this isn't hard; We killed it later the same night with 1x person dead the entire time, but less people dying IN the phase, and made it well in time. If everyone's alive he dies before he even starts the third darkness cast).

Setup wise, I feel like this is our big issue. We do not have a stable holy paladin we can bring. Is this make/break, or do you think we can get by with having a rshaman nearly solo them? Obviously it is less than optimal, but we do not have a MS hpala atm.

It's obviously doable without. It's just not nearly as painless as a holy paladin would be. Your shaman is going to need help. What setup are you thinking of going with? The main issue here is, you need to balance how many healing cooldowns you can spend on the healer adds to top them, versus how many you need to live on the second DPS adds. A paladin is the most efficient because then you just need a single healer CD for healer adds, and have everything else ready for DPS ones.

- - - Updated - - -

We do not have a warrior, which will be a big nerf to our AoE dps. From most guilds I seen it seems to be no problem to make the adds in 1 knockback, could you elaborate why it was to you?

We didn't have a "problem" making the adds in 1 knockback either, and do so most of the time (although on our kill this week, the boss phased directly in the middle because we forgot he phases at 40%, so we had to take 2x knocks instead as adds were spread in a nice circle all over the room). The main thing here is that if you go with the "stay near second knockback and immune first"-tactic, whenever you FAIL to do it, you don't instantly wipe. There's ~10-15 seconds from the second orb hits till the third orb spawns, so you have AGES to clean up the adds after the second knock as well.
Likewise, for whatever reason, as soon as we removed the pressure of "do these adds perfectly or we wipe cos we get a second orb", people started performing much better in the shadow phase, because they weren't nervous about doing everything 100% correct - which in turn LED to the fact that we never missed the DPS check.

As for lacking AOE damage, honestly, the bigger issue as I see it is AOE stun. How do you plan to control the adds? Our warriors usually start on either side of the room (Illidan basically has 3 spawn positions, so they have a 2/3 chance of getting lucky with an instant buff), then leap in and shockwave to control them. We don't have an AOE grip, so it's a bit more important for us, but you'll still need to control them untill your DK can get in position to grip everything. Whats your plan?

[Deleted]

So, for the third tank thing - if you don't need the stampeding roars, a DK is absolutely fine. I'd never recommend 2 tanking it (mostly because this week, while 3 tanking it, we still pushed before second healer adds even spawned by accident. Adding more DPS over a utility-tank is just 1000% wasted at this stage). As long as add damage is fine, the only concern for the third tank is "will stampeding or AOE grip be more useful for my raid". Does your AOE damage struggle if a boomkin has to suicide? It sucks to throw a deep P2 attempt away because of a RNG mark.

As for the third tank being RL, yea, you're right - you have a fair amount of wiggle room to focus on calling stuff. On the other hand, you also won't be able to focus on calling where people need to help soak (EG, if 4x small armageddons spawns in front of the boss, but the 2x big are behind, you are focused on the 2x big). It's a trade off. If you're the best bet for your third tank performance wise, I'd say stick with it.

As for the orb kiting being hectic - not really, no. The timing between each darkness of a thousand souls is:

Darkness.
Tear Rift.
Spawn obelisks (this is where you find safespot and mark).
Spawn fire orb *right after obelisks fire*.
Spawn second fire orb+Spawn second obelisks together. (this is where you find safespot and mark).
Spawn third fire orb *right before* second obelisks fire.

Repeat. Your goal basically is to kite the fire orb until the next one spawns, and if you do that, you won't have any "downtime" on trying to find a safespot for the obelisks. I don't know how good a DK is at kiting, though; I can stampeding roar or cat dash all of my orbs (if I stampeding roar the third orb-spawn baiting, I can roar for my own orb again the second time around, there's ~62 seconds between third orb and fourth orb spawning). You just have wraith walk. I think you'll struggle carrying the orbs into the portal and getting back out without a speed buff, or you'll just not be able to kite it long enough to make it as small as possible. That's just hyperbole from me though; Never tried it.

We didn't have a "problem" making the adds in 1 knockback either, and do so most of the time (although on our kill this week, the boss phased directly in the middle because we forgot he phases at 40%, so we had to take 2x knocks instead as adds were spread in a nice circle all over the room). The main thing here is that if you go with the "stay near second knockback and immune first"-tactic, whenever you FAIL to do it, you don't instantly wipe. There's ~10-15 seconds from the second orb hits till the third orb spawns, so you have AGES to clean up the adds after the second knock as well.
Likewise, for whatever reason, as soon as we removed the pressure of "do these adds perfectly or we wipe cos we get a second orb", people started performing much better in the shadow phase, because they weren't nervous about doing everything 100% correct - which in turn LED to the fact that we never missed the DPS check.

As for lacking AOE damage, honestly, the bigger issue as I see it is AOE stun. How do you plan to control the adds? Our warriors usually start on either side of the room (Illidan basically has 3 spawn positions, so they have a 2/3 chance of getting lucky with an instant buff), then leap in and shockwave to control them. We don't have an AOE grip, so it's a bit more important for us, but you'll still need to control them untill your DK can get in position to grip everything. Whats your plan?

We do 3 tank it - with Druid+Brew as the "tanks", as me as the third tank running around. Just to clarify!

I will consider what you said about the stress in the intermission department. In terms of the AoE stun, Id say that best way for us would either to have a shaman cast stun-totem at the location, or to have our Brewmaster tank roll in -> stun. For 100% foolproof (to simulate your case with Shockwave), we could also have a lock place his infernal on top of the grip position, and after he gets the illidan buff -> stun. I will look into this tonight.
Also, I am fairly certain we can grip them PRE "blind", aka they are already stacking when we get the illidan buff.

Reading through your post, I think one of the reasons your p2 intermission might have been harder, was to you not having a BDK (but the rest being easier). I don't know tho - no experience there yet!

It's obviously doable without. It's just not nearly as painless as a holy paladin would be. Your shaman is going to need help. What setup are you thinking of going with? The main issue here is, you need to balance how many healing cooldowns you can spend on the healer adds to top them, versus how many you need to live on the second DPS adds. A paladin is the most efficient because then you just need a single healer CD for healer adds, and have everything else ready for DPS ones.

Most likely healing setup: Disc/Resto druid/Rshaman/Rshaman or MW

What we plan to do (Which seems to be doable based maevycakes logs, gotta double check when I get home) is to have a shaman solo as much as possible, will their entire CD arsenal.
Disc priest will use all cds on P1 DPS adds, and if needed atleast LW on both sets of healer adds.
Druid will use tranq @Transition and on P2 DPS adds.
Our final healer (Rshaman or MW) will use all healing cds on both P1 and P2 DPS adds.

Tips for placing the marker? Buddy I'd like some myself. I haven't really found a system that works, and it's super fucking stressful knowing it has to be spot-on later in the fight. We got to right before the fourth darkness on a pull this week (went into P3 with 2 people dead and wiped at 10M), and I couldn't find the safespot. I went back with paint afterwards to try and see what I could have done better. This is the result:
https://gyazo.com/44e7f50d4b8f92f30effe3194aa8d28d (blue squares are safespots. Note that the two blue squares that's overlapped by the green ring are not viable safespots, as they are partly covered by the rift and would cause you to get constantly suckered into the damage from it).

After that I plain out said that I'm not good enough to find a safespot in that mess; Either we kill it by the obelisks that comes after the third darkness, or finding a safespot is pretty much a gamble (note that this isn't hard; We killed it later the same night with 1x person dead the entire time, but less people dying IN the phase, and made it well in time. If everyone's alive he dies before he even starts the third darkness cast).

Ok Its hard to find PoV from a mark placer - but I will look at what you have made, as well as more videos. I would just hate to fuck us up repeatly at that point, being that long into the fight

[Dracodraco]

We do 3 tank it - with Druid+Brew as the "tanks", as me as the third tank running around. Just to clarify!

While certainly doable, have you considered not having the same roles for P3? You could always tank KJ instead of the monk or the druid (who are both far more mobile) if you can't kite the orb yourself. The same goes for P2, really - if you struggle making it to armageddons in time (and I'd say you might, considering you won't have roar on every one and only a wraithwalk as your speed buff when it's not up), it's not like you HAVE to be the soak-bitch as a DK.

I will consider what you said about the stress in the intermission department. In terms of the AoE stun, Id say that best way for us would either to have a shaman cast stun-totem at the location, or to have our Brewmaster tank roll in -> stun. For 100% foolproof (to simulate your case with Shockwave), we could also have a lock place his infernal on top of the grip position, and after he gets the illidan buff -> stun. I will look into this tonight.
Also, I am fairly certain we can grip them PRE "blind", aka they are already stacking when we get the illidan buff.

Reading through your post, I think one of the reasons your p2 intermission might have been harder, was to you not having a BDK (but the rest being easier). I don't know tho - no experience there yet!

We had 2x dps DKs which ment 4x grips - we always get the adds stacked, so not having a blood DK wasn't a huge deal, actually. You *can* grip them pre-darkness, but if you do, it's important to note that you WILL need someone that can instantly get the buff and get a stun off, because by the time you make it back there if you're just walking or running even with a roar, the adds will have teleported away from the clump, and all the effort is wasted. We grip the 2x furthest into as many as we can with "normal" grips, hope we get a stun / typhoon etc on them to interrupt, then pet-grip in the remaining ones after everyone has illidan buff and go to town.
A brewmaster tank would work; He can put down transcendence on top of the adds, roll to illidans buff and transcend back to legsweep instantly (or atleast I *assume* he can; Never used one of those either). Whether he can use the transcendence again to counter the first knock I don't know though.

Most likely healing setup: Disc/Resto druid/Rshaman/Rshaman or MW

What we plan to do (Which seems to be doable based maevycakes logs, gotta double check when I get home) is to have a shaman solo as much as possible, will their entire CD arsenal.
Disc priest will use all cds on P1 DPS adds, and if needed atleast LW on both sets of healer adds.
Druid will use tranq @Transition and on P2 DPS adds.
Our final healer (Rshaman or MW) will use all healing cds on both P1 and P2 DPS adds.

It's certainly doable, but remember, you probably shouldn't compare your resto shaman to the *best parsing worldwide* resto shaman (and tied for #1 parsing healer with Sups). Just because Maevy can do it, does not mean your shaman can. Expect that he *will* need help. That being said, sounds about right - this is how our healing cds looked for progression (pushing the boss right before seventh armageddon in p2):
https://gyazo.com/591972f42374fbdb9c27eabb593d513a

So that's Disc barrier/burst+AM (your one resto shamans tide/AG/Ascendance if he goes for that over high tide) on first dps adds.
Tranq+Other shamans HTT/AG / SLT in intermission.
First shamans CDs on healer adds #1 (this is where I'd recommend your other shaman also AGs the adds to help out personally).
All cds except first shamans and second shaman AG on the second DPS adds.
First shamans cds + second shaman AG on second healer adds.
SLT#1 when you come out for the first Darkness.
Barrier+SLT#2 when you are doing second darkness (dodging into the rift).

And after that it's pretty much "live till next darkness with all cds, kill boss".

Ok Its hard to find PoV from a mark placer - but I will look at what you have made, as well as more videos. I would just hate to fuck us up repeatly at that point, being that long into the fight

Sadly, heroic won't give much practice either - he only adds a conduit after each darkness, so to even get to 5+ you have to spend ages in P3.

[Chewtoy]

We have 3 tanks - warrior, druid, DK will probably be our setup. Only other option is another warrior, or a hunter's alt druid. So we could do warrior, druid, druid if really needed. Out of those, would the warrior be best to soak all Armaggedon rain?

Also, are you immunity soaking the 2nd rain each time, or the tank that's not active doing the other?


You said illidan spawns in one of 3 locations, are those set based off of corner you pull him into or? It looks like a lot of videos pull him into the upper right corner when facing him at the start where the first orb spawns.

[Dracodraco]

We have 3 tanks - warrior, druid, DK will probably be our setup. Only other option is another warrior, or a hunter's alt druid. So we could do warrior, druid, druid if really needed. Out of those, would the warrior be best to soak all Armaggedon rain?

Both druid and DK are perfectly capable of soaking the big armageddons. I don't have any experience with warriors, but I imagine they could as well? I'd probably just let the warrior be a KJ tank though, and soak as many small armageddons with his leaps etc when he's not tanking as he can to help the raid. Far too valueable to waste on the big ones.

Also, are you immunity soaking the 2nd rain each time, or the tank that's not active doing the other?

Tanks get the 1 in P1 and 2 in P1.5. Immunities for the 6 in P2.

You said illidan spawns in one of 3 locations, are those set based off of corner you pull him into or? It looks like a lot of videos pull him into the upper right corner when facing him at the start where the first orb spawns.

Illidan and the shadow adds spawns in the same way. Difference being that while shadow adds spawns ~20 yards away from KJ, Illidan spawns ~40 yards away. This means that if you drag KJ into a corner right before you push, all the shadow adds will be confined to 25% of the space that they otherwise could spawn on.

This picture should help visualize it:

https://gyazo.com/21d13a109cfc22b8345103048ec4e764

If KJ is in the corner, then the green circle is the area the shadow adds can spawn in.
The blue circle is the area Illidan can spawn in.
The red circles are where we have stuns placed - one warrior in each outer red ring, and the rest of the raid in the middle one. That way the entire raid has minimal downtime going to either side (or might have illidan spawn right on top of them), while the warriors won't be quick enough to both run to a side and stun the adds before they teleport, so they have to gamble and hope illidan spawns on them (obviously, rest of the raid CCs if he doesn't spawn on a warrior).

[Deleted]

Thanks again for your inputs and help Draco.
We are going to try KJ, and we found a big problem yesterday. Our DK tank after the dispel will always get kicked away from the platform.
Rest of the raid has no problem, getting gripped correctly at his position (the debuff was on the dk tank).
Anyone have the same problem here?

[Deleted]

Thanks again for your inputs and help Draco.
We are going to try KJ, and we found a big problem yesterday. Our DK tank after the dispel will always get kicked away from the platform.
Rest of the raid has no problem, getting gripped correctly at his position (the debuff was on the dk tank).
Anyone have the same problem here?

You need a tank that can stay on the platform by itself to perform the mass-raid grip (so every tanks except DK...), because the debuff only mass-grip the raid to the tank, it does NOT make the tank immune to the knockback. So either you change the tank that get the tank add debuff or the DK has to take a warlock portal/priest grip/Draught of souls/goblin to avoid getting knockback.

The best 3 tanks comp is double bear + DK. The Dk and one bear are the main tanks, and the other bear is the 3rd tank who never tank the boss and soak all the big armagueddons. That way you have double roar, the mass grip to make the second transition a joke, and you have insane adds damage : Bear can put a MONSTRUOUS amount of damage on the DPS adds, they are going to be above a lot of your DPS on this adds and i'm not even joking. Having one being the off tank allows him to build full damage, with damage legendaries/talent, stand in the middle of the adds triangle, and take it to another level (we are talking near boomkins damage).

[Deleted]

You need a tank that can stay on the platform by itself to perform the mass-raid grip (so every tanks except DK...), because the debuff only mass-grip the raid to the tank, it does NOT make the tank immune to the knockback. So either you change the tank that get the tank add debuff or the DK has to take a warlock portal/priest grip/Draught of souls/goblin to avoid getting knockback.

The best 3 tanks comp is double bear + DK. The Dk and one bear are the main tanks, and the other bear is the 3rd tank who never tank the boss and soak all the big armagueddons. That way you have double roar, the mass grip to make the second transition a joke, and you have insane adds damage : Bear can put a MONSTRUOUS amount of damage on the DPS adds, they are going to be above a lot of your DPS on this adds and i'm not even joking. Having one being the off tank allows him to build full damage, with damage legendaries/talent, stand in the middle of the adds triangle, and take it to another level (we are talking near boomkins damage).

Oh, clear.
We have a good setup, 2 bear and 1 dk. So we start with the dk on boss and druid will use the charge after the dispel.

Transition1 looks very simple.

P2 looks the hardest atm.

Thanks for the help guys, i'll post soon if i have some questions.

[Deleted]

Oh, clear.
We have a good setup, 2 bear and 1 dk. So we start with the dk on boss and druid will use the charge after the dispel.

Transition1 looks very simple.

P2 looks the hardest atm.

Thanks for the help guys, i'll post soon if i have some questions.

Yes Phase 2 is the hardest part (the second set of DPS adds is deadly because you don't have all your healing cooldown etc..). Getting out of P2 consistenly without dead people is the longest part of progression, and when it's done you are going to be near a kill.
Then the second intermission is a joke with a BDK (you should never wiped here if you go in with most of you raid alive), and P3 is a relatively "easy" phase. Though in P3 you have specific things to do (they are not hard, but unforgivable), and you really want to explain precisely to your raiders what to do in P3, beforehand. You don't want to waste P3 pulls because people have no clue what to do.

[Dracodraco]

You need a tank that can stay on the platform by itself to perform the mass-raid grip (so every tanks except DK...), because the debuff only mass-grip the raid to the tank, it does NOT make the tank immune to the knockback. So either you change the tank that get the tank add debuff or the DK has to take a warlock portal/priest grip/Draught of souls/goblin to avoid getting knockback.

Bolded part isn't actually true. Prot paladins have no way of staying on the platform either - apart from bubble, which would remove the debuff, triggering the grasp too early. It's to do with when you time the dispel. You are doing it too early if the tank gets sent off. Dispelling stops the dispelled persons momentum as well, but he has 0 travel time. That's why if you dispel .1 seconds too early, he will die, and everyone else will live (as they're travelling through the air when the knock actually happens while he isn't).

Thanks again for your inputs and help Draco.
We are going to try KJ, and we found a big problem yesterday. Our DK tank after the dispel will always get kicked away from the platform.
Rest of the raid has no problem, getting gripped correctly at his position (the debuff was on the dk tank).
Anyone have the same problem here?

Read above.

[Deleted]

Bolded part isn't actually true. Prot paladins have no way of staying on the platform either - apart from bubble, which would remove the debuff, triggering the grasp too early. It's to do with when you time the dispel. You are doing it too early if the tank gets sent off. Dispelling stops the dispelled persons momentum as well, but he has 0 travel time. That's why if you dispel .1 seconds too early, he will die, and everyone else will live (as they're travelling through the air when the knock actually happens while he isn't).

Can confirm this. I was always taking the 2nd Tank add in P2 as DK and i wasnt kicked from the Plattform. it sometimes happened when healers dispelled too early

[Chewtoy]

How many smallish armaggedons are there? Do you just assign groups of 4 or so to watch a quadrant?

[Dracodraco]

How many smallish armaggedons are there? Do you just assign groups of 4 or so to watch a quadrant?

6 Small armageddons. Anyone without a dot goes hunting for them. Never assigned quadrants except 1x vocal caster for each to call out if they had a lot so people could make it over in time (EG, +3 in one quadrant).

[Chewtoy]

Are guilds sac'ing one of the orb targets in phase 1 (the orbs where you have to run and drop them while everyone dodges in the middle). If so, why? If not, why not?

It seems like it's really common in phase 2, but about 50/50 phase 1.