HM 10 Zonozz help

[seraphino]

Hi, my guild is having issues downing HM Zonozz on 10 man. With nearly 100 attempts on him we thought it was time to look for some outside help. Any constructive criticism/suggestions/questions welcome. Our guild is very tolerant of wipes but it's about time we got this guy down. We often feel with a bit more 'luck' we could have had him multiple times but I think the reality is that we're compensating for individual mistakes that would be better of being eliminated.


Raid composition: For Zonozz, 1 tank 3 healers 6 DPS

Tank
Feral Druid

Healers
Discipline Priest
Restoration Druid
Holy Paladin

DPS
Combat rogue
Feral druid
Fire mage (This is me - I'm not going to hide, I have made play errors and am especially interested in resolving these)
Retribution paladin
2x Survival hunters

We do not have a bench, that's pretty much it. It's not the ideal composition by any means and suggestions again are welcome but please bear in mind the difficulty of implementing them.

Again to make it clear we are over 90 attempts on this boss, all with 15% debuff on raid.

Our latest WoL parse is here (First post no links): -
worldoflogs .com/reports/90lvlwxfxzakr7d6
Comprising ~10 attempts varying from accidental pull length to +5 minutes until a raid member DCed and we couldn't replace. Special shout out to our hunter who pet-pulled one attempt.

Black phase tends to kill us most often. On early attempts there are some instances where the tank is taking ball and other such mistakes, but black phase is the most problematic. I think this is an execution problem or the healing is too much.

Our tactic is 7-5-5-5, and I am solo soaking the 7th with Cauterise. Holy paladin is assigned tank healer, resto druid stands in melee and heals non-tank melee, discipline priest stands in ranged and heals ranged. So melee group is rogue, 2x druid, 2x paladin, ranged mage, 2 hunters, priest.

During black phase we stack on claw for AoE, popping usually 2 raid cooldowns in rotation. Ranged deal with flails, rogue stays claw to flurry once boss arrives, and ret paladin and cat druid take the 2 eyes. Once ranged have the flails down we have a 2-man ranged team (1 hunter and mage) break to the 2 eyes and the other hunter to the other side, each with a healer. Currently resto druid is covering mage/hunter and holy paladin is following the other hunter. After black ranged gather on boss spawn point to take ball and boss stays tanked on claw spawn point.

Problem points seem to be the mage and hunter dying to black blood or eye beams while dealing with eyes. Also general ball phase mismanagement - tank taking ball damage, ranged not spreading far enough for 7th bounce, but we know about this and general raid awareness is something we are working hard on already.

We have recently realised eyes can be interrupted, and have identified flails as highest priority, and are open to different healing assignments based on player skill rather than class/spec advantages as we have it now.

--

TLDR: Zonozz 10M HM, black phase problems, resto druid can't keep mage and hunter up while we kill eyes.

[Kaharon]

After reading through it just seems to me that your resto druid isn't good. I am playing resto druid, too. Having to heal our Tank, rogue, rogue, mage, warlock and myself it is actually very easy to do so, even more with the 15% nerf (20% coming soon). Aside the usual problems as bad pulling/standing wrong it is actually the druids fault that he can't heal good enough.

I would suggest to try out to let the druid heal the melee group and let another healer take mage/hunter, even though it actually shouldn't change much aside from having to heal more because he heals tank now.

[seraphino]

Thanks a lot for the suggestion.

We certainly could do that, though is it going to be easier for him to heal a whole melee group than 3 people (himself/hunter/mage)?

Do you have any thoughts on the benefit of assigning him just hunter and himself on the opposite side eye?

[Deleted]

We had him going toward the side to kill flail asap, as black phase started, just him and 1 hunter. That failed horribly, claimed this was impossible to heal
We then had him going to the other side, healing himself, a mage and a hunter. This also must be impossible, seeing as the Disco priest, Holy Pala and Retri have to run and help heal his group during black phase.
In conclusion I doubt it would be a good idea having him heal more people in melee or the tank.

[oberetta]

I think part of the ease is that if he just stands still and heals group 1, it requires no awareness. Moving with the dps requires some awarenees of being in range of the dps as they spread, which means knowing when you can instant cast and when you can stop to cast a heal, but better not stop to cast if you are out of range or you fall behind, and then the druid stays out of range and is late getting back to the ranged stack after black blood phase, etc. you get my drift.

[Xene]

try mixing it up. what we do (in our case, 1 frost dk instead of your feral druid, and our rogue isnt combat yet) is have the disc priest on range heals, pally on tank/close melee, druid on melee.

what i mean by "close" melee, is of our 3 melee, 2 will burn the eyes, and 1 (myself, frost dk) on the flail. This is the eye/flail combination behind the boss i am speaking about (2 eyes, 1 flail, 3rd eye is next to claw which range take). After i take the flail, i move to the 2nd eye while the 1st eye is being burnt by the other two melee, once their target is killed they head to claw, same for me once mine is done.

the majority of the time, the tank deals with the claw. with the nerf, the claws hp isnt much, and its alot easier to nuke down will all dps than just 1 and a tank, better to use the 1 dps on something else.

for the range, they immediately nuke the flail, then burn the eyes from the outside-in (furthers from claw, to closest to claw).

the restro druid will be in range of all melee, namely myself due to soloing the flail, then they move to tank once i head to my 2nd flail, likewise for our paladin healer.
the disc priest will already be with range, and the pally on the tank/close enough to reach -some- melee.

How are you Starting the fight? On the Claw, or in the Center? Try -Starting- in the center, then after first phase keeping boss at the claw.

Ensure people who CAN interrupt/silence, do so on the eyes, it definitely helps slow the raid damage.

i would immediately say let the feral druid solo the far(behind boss) flail, they can leap/pounce/whateverthefuck to it, then stampeding roar to the 2nd (remember pally and rogue on 1st eye) which should still be up for the pally and rogue to either Help on FDruids eye or head to Claw.

7-5-5-5 is possible, but to be safe stay at 7-7-7-5. You dont want to perfect a black phase only to hit enrage timer and then have everyone get used to taking more dmg during bounce phase.

after 3 black phases, bounce the ball 5 times, hit boss, stack, hero, nuke. remember when the boss is hit by the ball, he runs to the center, then back to the claw. either have your melee chase after him (not so good considering you have a ret and a rogue) or let them burn the claw, but the tank Has to be at the claw regardless, his threat on the boss should be enough to not let the range take it off him when boss comes back from channeling.

during this time (fourth black blood phase) ignore all adds, pop all healing CDs and take that boss to loottown!

best of luck, and i hope my wall of text was some help!

ps: dont be afriad to even push the boss to 1 bounce, just to Perfect your black phase. if the black phase is killing you, your not spending enough time on it to understand how to properly kill stuff. Bouncy doesnt matter while you practice, that can come after you know who is doing what in black.

[Kaharon]

Wow, I am sorry to say so, but your healer seems to be a bad player. I am healing 6 people and still have the time to run to the other group (after I hotted all up) and help out there, because we actually 1 1/2 heal it, disc priest with ~ 75% heal form attonement. Is he using any cooldowns? How does he actually heal? After looking at the logs I can only see that his lifebloom uptime is terrible (15 to 20%, which should be 90%+) this could lead to mana problems in the long run. It seems like he uses his efflorescence very well though, so I can't understand how he fails there :/

[Imperio]

I do this fight as a disc priest and I normally heal the range group (myself and 2 range). With the other 2 healers being a holy paladin and resto shaman. What I normally do is get 5 stacks of evangelism before the black phase and pop wings as the black phase starts. (I'm sure your priest is doing this already) I then spam shield on all my heal targets on cd and use flash/binding heal as required. We normally don't need to pop many cd's during this phase and I find that I rarely need to pop power infusion to keep up with the healing. The holy paladin is the assigned tank healer while the shaman heals melee.

Some suggestions I can offer are as follows:
Have the druid heal the tank and assist melee heals with HoTs etc. I'm sure he'd be able to keep the tank up with Lifebloom, swiftmend, etc. Looking at his spec, some changes I would make are to drop living seed (I think it's pretty useless although I haven't healed on my druid since FL) and pick up Nautre's Bounty. You could have your disc priest healing the range group in the same way that I do and it should be relatively easy. I would also suggest that your disc priest completely reforge out of spirit and into haste/mastery. By using an addon such as ingelas rapture cd tracker it is extremely easy to keep up mana regen as a disc priest without spirit. The throughput you gain from the extra mastery/haste is amazing.

[seraphino]

Some really helpful information and suggestions here guys, thanks very much for taking the time to help out.

We are starting the fight with ranged on claw and boss in centre where he starts, then after first black phase moving ranged to centre and tanking boss on claw spawn, and we'll try interrupting more. I should be able to squeeze in at least 2 per black with CS.

We will probably switch to 7-7-7-5, and thanks very much for resto druid tips these are especially appreciated.

[Philby]

Here's how we do it. Our setup is feral tank, holy paladin, resto druid, disc priest, 2 melee (either rogue, warrior or rogue enhancement shaman), 4 ranged (lock, mage, spriest, elemental shammy/hunter). Before first black phase we tank him in the middle, ranged (minus mage and disc priest who are in melee) stack at the edge of the water in front of Zon'ozz. In the black phase, tank, rogue and holy paladin go to the Claw. Warlock, mage, hunter/eleshaman and resto druid go to left of the boss (seen from where he was before the pull) and kill the one flail and two eyes there. Spriest, warrior/enhanceshaman and disc priest go right and kill the flail and eyes there. Then we have the boss face the initial stack point for ranged and just repeat.

At the start of each black phase, our resto druid and holy paladin cycle their healing CD's. As for bounces, we normally take 7 each round, if I don't recall wrong we only get three "real" black phases, after that we just pop everything we have and burn him down, while keeping the ball from getting away from us ofc.

Hope this helps!

[draykorinee]

I think your druid has a lot to learn, his harmony and lifebloom uptime seem abysmal, sometimes his maw proc does more healing than lifebloom... don't think that's right. Im definitely no expert but his logs look bad. Even when his uptime is 100% its only doing 2% healing something a bit weird with that.
His healing regularly drops to nothing during some fights it should never do that if he healed properly.

[seraphino]

Also hadn't thought of just pushing black phase with one bounce for practice, thanks a lot for that.

Will chat with our discipline priest about a reforge but I think he has been having trouble with OOM, so at the very least will check with him about a Rapture addon.

If there's any other information I have failed to provide please ask and I will do my best to provide.

[Oratory]

We do one melee per flail, range doesn't touch those at all. Range is split into two groups and rounds up the eyes.

For your comp I'd do the feral on one flail and the rogue on the other. They can be in position by moving to their spawn points before the black phase starts so they can burst them down immediately. After they die, sprint over to the closest eye (which should be near dead already from range) then the next eye. Make sure your healers are range of their assigned melee.

Put the ret pally on the eye closest to the claw, then on to the claw after it dies - cleaving the boss.

On the 4th black phase, kill the flails but ignore the eyes and burn the boss. You want the boss to die around the end of heroism to maximize its effectiveness so you'll actually want to cast it before the 4th black phase starts.

[Jinto]

Your rogue is doing some pretty bad dps for staying on the boss the entire time. His SnD uptime is low and cd usage probably bad. One of your hunters should run a wind serpent for 8% spell damage taken. You have 2 ferals and a wolf... Your tank needs to be better about tanking both the claw and the boss. Your raid took a significant amount of damage from the claw and your healers are already struggling to keep up.

[Oratory]

Also - looking at your longest attempt your healers each have about 3k more hps than ours on our most recent kill (and you have about 9k more dps taken raid-wide) so any spell rotation usage that I don't know about aside, I think your healing is fine. If you don't have any stray deaths and can clear out the dark phases a little quicker/more efficiently then you should get the kill.

[ZaneBusby]

Alright it looks like most of what you've gotta fix has been pointed out to you, but I didn't finish reading the entire page... I'm just going to tell you how my guild killed it (first kill was only 3 weeks ago), and give some quick tips, that may have already been said... :P

I'm going to try really hard to draw the layout of the room just using text, dunno how it'll turn out, but bear with me...

Edit: It looks like mmo-champion doesn't appreciate me using so many spaces between letters, so they've reduced it down to just one... I think you might be able to see the ACTUAL layout if you click "Reply With Quote" at the bottom of my post, and read it from there... If not, just imagine there are gigantic spaces between all the pairs of brackets, and that X is just above ^, which is right next to the left-hand pair of brackets in the 3rd row, and the * is just above the left hand pair of brackets in the 4th row, and # is almost smack-bang in the middle of all the pairs of brackets... I hope that makes sense! >_<

() (x)

() (x)

X #
()^ (x)
*
() ()


Imagine each of the () is one of the brown circles on the ground eye beams can spawn from. (x) are the brown circles our guild will NEVER have the eye beams spawn out of. X is the red raid marker. * is the yellow raid marker. ^ is the green raid marker. # is the blue raid marker. (X, Star, Triangle, and Square).

How our guild does it: 2 melee and 2 healers stack on ^, and 4 ranged and 1 healer stack on *. Off the bat our tank pulls the boss straight back to X, and turns the boss to face *, all before the first orb spawns (he's gotta be VERY quick on his toes, often the ball is slightly off-angle, but we accommodate). We bounce it 5 times doing it properly (soaking the ball as a group, and running out to get dispelled if you have the debuff then running back in), but after the 5th bounce, all the ranged except our fire mage move to #. The melee take the 6th bounce as normal, then the fire mage cauterize-soaks the 7th bounce solo, then we let the ball hit the boss. We do the exact same thing for every single phase, except the last (which I'll get to soon).

Once he enters the black phase, our hunter and warlock (your's truly), head to the north-western side of the room, and take out the flail, and 2 eye beams there, and have one of our 3 healers go with us. He's assigned to ONLY heal myself, the hunter, and himself. It's best to use CDs and stuff as SOON as you enter the black phase (such as tree form or whatever), because for the first 5 or so seconds before you take out some flails are when it's the most healing intensive part (due to the stacking DoT per add alive).

Our 2 mages stay on the south side of the room and take out the flail there, then their 2 eye beams, and they have a healer assigned to them to strictly heal himself and both mages.

Our 2 melee cleave down the claw tentacle, and then the last eye beam that's right next to them, before the black phase is over (and since you're blessed with a combat rogue, that should be EASY). They also have a healer, who's healing himself, both melee, and the tank. (Holy Paladin with beacon in our case).

Once all the adds are dead, we stack back up in our proper locations, and rinse and repeat. We do that 3 times through, then on the 4th orb, we bounce it 5 times, let it hit the boss, then stack up in the centre, bloodlust, rotate healing CDs etc, and burn the shit out of him.

The reason you pull the boss to X off the bat is because the boss will spawn eye beams during black phase in the closest spawn-points to his current location. If you tank him all the way on that side, you will NEVER get eye beams on the eastern side, which makes it a SHIT LOAD easier. If you tank him in the centre like on normal mode, the eye beams and flails will spawn anywhere in the room at all, which is BAD.


I hope that helps you somewhat!

[seraphino]

Thanks all, hunter's off to find a wind serpent, rogue and resto druid on the list to speak to, and we'll try switching up some DPS assignments as suggested just to get out of black quicker. On our longer attempts we have sometimes hit enrage so I know we can get through it, just need to be doing so consistently and with more DPS, so all of this really helps.

[Blackmist]

1st black phase. Use Bear 4P bonus. Heal.
2nd black phase. Use healer CDs.
3rd, repeat of 1st.
4th, stack up, use healer CDs, nuke boss dead.

We don't split the ranged team. They stick together, nuke the 2 they can reach, move nuke the 3rd, move back and help with the 4th before returning to boss. If you don't stand where we stand, that will make no sense.

[seraphino]

The reason you pull the boss to X off the bat is because the boss will spawn eye beams during black phase in the closest spawn-points to his current location. If you tank him all the way on that side, you will NEVER get eye beams on the eastern side, which makes it a SHIT LOAD easier. If you tank him in the centre like on normal mode, the eye beams and flails will spawn anywhere in the room at all, which is BAD.


I hope that helps you somewhat!

Absolutely did not know this, though we seem to get eyes spawning in the same spots every time without this tactic. Perhaps I'm missing something and have sometimes been moving much further than I realised?

[ZaneBusby]

Absolutely did not know this, though we seem to get eyes spawning in the same spots every time without this tactic. Perhaps I'm missing something and have sometimes been moving much further than I realised?

Well, there's potential I could actually just be wrong, but I know my current guild has NEVER had a single eye beam spawn in any one of the 3 (x)'s I marked out, by using the method of taking the boss to X. Before that, in a different guild (before it fell apart lol), we tanked the boss in the middle of the room for the few attempts we had, and the eye beams just spawned everywhere, and it was horrible, and we couldn't even beat the first black phase.

On a side note, don't know if it's been said already, or he already knows, but make sure your combat rogue is burning down Zon'ozz, blade flurrying the claw, NOT burning down the claw and blade flurrying Zon'ozz. If he burns Zon'ozz with blade flurry on, both the boss AND the claw take the extra damage from the boss's stacking debuff. If he burns the claw with blade flurry on, NEITHER the boss nor the claw take the extra damage. Just thought I should throw that out there. :P