heroic zon'ozz (25m) - phase 1 question

[RemJay24]

My 25m guild is currently at 3/8 HM - so not super hardcore. We just started to work on zon'ozz last night and I have a few questions concerning phase 1.

What does your guild do for p1? Do you split into two groups; range and melee; and bounce the ball back and forth (much like what was done on normal mode)? Or does everyone clump up in melee and have "soakers" run out to bounce the ball back by themselves? Last night we were doing it with everyone in melee and had 4 people assigned to running out to soak the bounce and bring it back to the boss, myself being one of them. We had a shadow priest, two fire mages and me (a sub rogue spec'd into cheat death). I personally don't like this, as combat rogues typically destroy the meters, but killing the boss is the most important part - so I'll do what is needed from the raid.

What other classes/specs can "soak."? Couldn't a fire Mage soak twice (cauterize/ice tomb), thus not requiring me to sprint out and hit the ball?

Thanks!

[dumathoinn]

two groups is the easiest way to do it. its not all that hard to heal at all till p2 so no need to have a dps loss with people stopping dps and running out to catch a ball

[RemJay24]

awesome, I'll see if I can convince my raid to try that out tonight.

[Kinegos]

To minimize healing, by far the easiest way is to use mages and shadow priests as ranged soakers, and everyone else stack behind the boss as a melee soak group. Mages can only use cauterize - ice block doesn't work. My guild, using this approach, requires 4 ranged soakers and we do a 9/7/7/4 stack sequence. We usually have hunters stand out of the raid to remove any issues due to their dead zone, and it also allows them to finish claws easily if that is needed following a shadow phase. If you don't have enough mages/spriests then you can have ranged dps and some healers if needed stack for the first void ball of each rotation and then proceed with the mages/spriests.

[Redfern]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5ur92s7EPM&hd=1

This is what we did, we had the raid soak all bounces with 2 end points 'triggering' the ball to explode and healed through the debuffs.

This tactic provides a good way to minimise movement.

When the ball is ready to go into the boss, we had the 'trigger' person move back and had the raid move out. This person (mage) would then solo soak and trigger cauterise and send it into the boss. We did a 10-8-8-4 rotation.

[Deleted]

The soakers running out to soak seems a far easier strat to me. The only person losing any significant DPS is you, and no offense but one DPS in a 25m raid doesn't mean much compared to how much simpler it becomes. True its a Combat Rogue which is a huge loss and if you were doing it as your 2nd boss a month ago it would have been important, but if you've already downed H Ultrax then you have plenty of DPS for this fight, especially with the 10% nerf.

I don't think IB and Bubble work since I think the ball will ignore immune targets when triggering its explosion. Not 100% sure on this though.

[fearmemortals]

I don't think IB and Bubble work since I think the ball will ignore immune targets when triggering its explosion. Not 100% sure on this though.

This is correct. If you IB etc it'll just pass straight though you.

[cFortyfive]

Enough healers, one group heal through debuffs and have mages and shadowpriests bounce seems to me the easiest tactic as well - at least it seemed a lot easier when there wasn't a 10% debuff.