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  1. #1
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    [Elemental] - Mogu'shan Vaults Heroic First Impressions

    So, I said I'd do another one of these for heroic modes, as requested, so here it is. I'll also post the rest of the normal mode first impressions in the normal mode thread soon.

    At this time I'm only 1/6, so I'll just give Stone Guard for now, as before, please comment on my conclusions, your own and any bosses I have not yet done

    Stone Guard Heroic - 10 Man

    I'm in a 10 man guild now, and I know this fight is probably one of the most different in 10 compared to 25 as it has RNG involved in it for 10 man. This week I had the following set up:

    Jasper
    Amethyst
    Cobalt

    The talent/glyph setup I used was:

    Glyphs: Unleashed Lightning, Flame Shock, Telluric Currents
    Talents: Nature's Guardian, Windwalk Totem, Call of the Elements, Echo of the Elements, Ancestral Guidance, Elemental Blast

    I took Unleashed Lightning and Telluric currents for quick mana refills whilst moving out of puddles and cobalt traps when I didn't have any instants up or Spiritwalker's, or when I was using the Living Crystals. This meant I had very rare mana troubles with the CL spam on two targets.

    Following some sound advice in the other thread I took Elemental Blast instead of Primal Elementalist and I think it was indeed the better choice. It reduces the amount of time you spend Chain Lightning spamming, meaning your mana lasts longer and your less likely to be oom. I found the general movement on the fight and using the crystals was enough time for me to sustain my mana with Lightning Bolt spam through Telluric Currents.

    Windwalk Totem is an absolute MUST on this fight. When you get the Cobalt active it means your able to run into the traps and destroy them so you can clear the room, however even with the damage reduction you still get rooted. If you pop this it means your entire raid can very rapidly clear the room of traps and almost 'reset' the fight, as long as your good at playing three-legged-race with your Jasper-Chains partner. Call of the Elements was taken to complement this in the eventuality that trap spawns were bad and we were forced to destroy some outside of Cobalt phase (someone pops a defensive cooldown, you windwalk totem or Hand of Freedom them, they destroy it, whole raid runs free).

    Echo of the Elements was again taken for the CL spam and Ancestral Guidance is just GODLY on this fight. The damage buff combined with CL spam means it heals for insane amounts, a good 600-700k per cast I was getting. If we had the Jade Guardian up or if you are in a 25 man guild this will be even better.

    On my actual impressions of the fight, I loved it. I was regularly top DPS (beating out a Mage, a Warlock, a Rogue and a Hunter) and always in the top two, I felt really useful with Windwalk Totem and Ancestral Guidance and our movement is brilliant. Save Spiritwalker's Grace for Ascendance if you can help it and your DPS almost doesn't suffer on this fight (you just drop from CL to LB if you're forced to move too much and refill your mana bar for more CL later). Overall, I loved this fight. In the end I finished the fight with something like 116k DPS and was Rank 1 on 10 man HC (think I've since been overtaken, at time of this edit I'm 2nd).

    Feng the Accursed Heroic - 10 man

    Order we did the phases:

    1- Staff (Arcane)
    2- Shield (Adds)
    3- Fist (Epicentre)
    4- Spear (Fire)

    Talents: Nature's Guardian, Earthbind Totem, Call of the Elements, Echo of the Elements, Healing Tide Totem, Elemental Blast
    Glyphs: Flame Shock, Chain Lightning, Unleashed Lightning

    I chose Healing Tide Totem for this fight because the healing is pretty intense in some sections of the fight so an extra (fairly powerful) raid cooldown is always good, and due to the fact that the damage comes in single target phases with no damage buff Ancestral Guidance is pretty meh on this fight. I took Call to complement this incase I ever needed an emergency cooldown (never actually needed it but work having to be safe).

    Talent wise its fairly obvious. Flame Shock as usual, Chain Lighting for the add phase, Unleashed Lightning for the Arcane Phase (moving in for the aoe, back out again, ect) and the Fire Phase (run out of the raid pack if get Wild Spark).

    With the phase order my guild had if I popped Ascendance on the pull it would come up almost exactly too the second of when the second wave of adds spawn in the Shield Phase. We used the null field on the first wave and third wave so I was able to utterly destroy the second wave. Doing 3million+ damage to a single wave of adds is absolutely amazing. The fact we had 2 elemental Shaman meant our hunter could go BM for more single target as we didn't need him survival, making up for the loss of using Ascendance on adds instead of the boss.

    I found this fight to be a very good for elemental. Healing Tide Totem is so noticable on this fight and, even without Ascendance, our AoE on the adds is second-to-none. Its just a perfect fight for us. Then put on top of that the usefulness of Earthbind Totem, Capacitor Totem and Thunderstorm for add control and the utility we bring is just insane (my guild had a monk for leg sweep and a DK with Remorseless Winter so I didn't actually have to use CPT or EBT and just saved the GCDs but the option was 100% there, same with Thunderstorm we killed the adds without needing the knockback but the option is again there).

    I ended the fight with something like 76k DPS (our logger DCed before the pull and forgot to turn WoL back on for the kill -.-).

    Gara'jal the Spiritbinder Heroic - 10 man

    Coming soon when Blizzard nerf this or when we get rediculously lucky with crit RNG or something. The tuning on this fight on 10 man... I mean seriously what the hell man?

    Thoughts?

    My overall thoughts of Mogu'shan so far are that I absolutely LOVE the position Elemental is in at the moment. Our utility is enough to get us raid spots by itself, and the fights are just so good for our. The movement, burst AoE, cleaving, high healing (our utility), everything. All our good points are utilised somewhere. Its great. I haven't felt so useful in a raid basically ever, it goes so far beyond numbers. The best thing is our numbers back it up too. Overall, loving Mists Raiding so far.

    If people want them, will post videos of my kills when our Raid Leader says we are good to do so (whilst general tactics and things are fine to share, our Raid Leader still wants to keep vids private for now) if people would like to see them, but only if they would - not going to clutter this thread with videos unless people would find it useful.

    As said in the other thread, I will be adding useful tips from others to the original posts so please do give your own. Again, like I said in the other thread this is in no way meant as a Guide but simply a list of my observations on the fights and anything good I found on it.
    Last edited by mmoc63fa3da953; 2012-10-11 at 11:53 PM.

  2. #2
    Bloodsail Admiral zenga's Avatar
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    That is indeed a damn good idea to use windwalk totem here.

  3. #3
    Stood in the Fire Ekkoeu's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by zenga View Post
    That is indeed a damn good idea to use windwalk totem here.
    Nice tip right there, didn't use it last night, wish I did.

    Another helpful thread by Undefetter.

  4. #4
    Stone Guard Heroic - 25 Man

    Pretty much what Undefetter said applies to 25 man. Windwalk totem is a very good idea. As I stated in the first thread, your DPS will vary based on the strategy employed by your guild and what job you are given. For me, it was "Light up all the Tiles!" and stay in Ghost Wolf form as much as possible to speed up the process. DPS time was reserved for when I was chained to a melee and had to stop lighting up tiles until the next Jasper phase. By the way, what does this remind you of?

    Feng the Accursed Heroic - 25 Man

    We got him down last night. I found myself sacrificing a bit of dps to toss extra Healing Rains during Epicenter's just to make sure we didn't lose anyone early. Earthbind Totem + Totemic Projection is a must for Shield Phase as well as Thunderstorm knockback and glyphed CL. We ended up going Staff > Fist > Shield > Spear. I popped Ascendance+Stormlash on pull, had Ascendance again during Fist Phase, had it for Shield phase (used it on a set of Soul Fragments) and had it for the final burn phase as well. Damage was ok, still towards the bottom of the raid (I beat a boomkin and a shadow priest and was very close to the 6-7 dps above me).

  5. #5
    Actually a few good tips that I will bring into our next kill. Im only 1/6 H but I am personally liking the difficulty. Not going in and crushing all the bosses in a night is refreshing. My personal dps shouldve been higher I ended at a dismal 99k when I should have been up over 120k but I know what I need to top meters and rank for next weeks kill. Looking forward to getting Feng down and moving through the rest.

  6. #6
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    Windwalk also removes the slow effect from the petrification, so for guilds having trouble with exploding the right dog, it can really help with mobility even without the frost traps.

  7. #7
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    @Wunhunglo - I had that song on replay the entire night of attempts. Love Michael Jackson and its an amazing raiding song, makes you feel bad ass.

    On topic, about your suggestion for Earthbind and Totemic Projection, just as an FYI there is actually a maximum amount of time your allowed to keep the adds away from the shield for. If your guild has a lot of slows and multiple knockbacks you shouldn't use that as an excuse to slack on mobs or something, the shield will absorb them after a short time (think its like 20 seconds? Not sure exactly) no matter where they are.

    Also I'm not sure using Ascendance on the adds is the best idea. If your guild has the ability to kill them every time with it you're likely better off using it on the boss. Might try it though, see how it works out. Depends how much your guild struggles with the adds.

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Undefetter View Post
    @Wunhunglo - I had that song on replay the entire night of attempts. Love Michael Jackson and its an amazing raiding song, makes you feel bad ass.

    On topic, about your suggestion for Earthbind and Totemic Projection, just as an FYI there is actually a maximum amount of time your allowed to keep the adds away from the shield for. If your guild has a lot of slows and multiple knockbacks you shouldn't use that as an excuse to slack on mobs or something, the shield will absorb them after a short time (think its like 20 seconds? Not sure exactly) no matter where they are.

    Also I'm not sure using Ascendance on the adds is the best idea. If your guild has the ability to kill them every time with it you're likely better off using it on the boss. Might try it though, see how it works out. Depends how much your guild struggles with the adds.
    Our guild didn't have any issues with adds but popping Ascendance was a sure fire (no pun intended) way of making sure that that wave would not be an issue. Now that I am confident that we can get the adds w/o ascendance, I will be using it between add phases on the boss.

    The Earthbind Totem probably wasn't a huge help for my 25 man raid team but it will probably be a necessity for 10 man raids as you may/will not have as many options/slows as a 25 man raid. In my raid it is pretty much a redundancy but a worthwhile redundancy IMO. You can never be too careful when you are 65% through the fight and a few adds being absorbed usually means a wipe.

    I am not really trying to parse right now. My main concern is playing as close to perfect mechanically as possible and embracing the hybrid role as we progress through HM bosses. As we get them down I start to figure out where I can improve DPS wise and where my wiggle room is.

  9. #9
    Bloodsail Admiral zenga's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Undefetter View Post
    Love Michael Jackson
    I pictured you more as a britney spears/ justin bieber fan tbh
    Last edited by zenga; 2012-10-11 at 07:59 PM.

  10. #10
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    Updated original post with my impressions of Feng after our kill tonight.

    Quote Originally Posted by zenga View Post
    I pictured you more as a britney spears/ justin bieber fan tbh
    lol not sure how to take that man.

  11. #11
    Bloodsail Admiral zenga's Avatar
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    I found the ghostwolf glyph incredibly good on The stone guard. We had a whole lot of screwed up attempts, mainly due to poor play. It wasn't until I said |I'd do the floor cleaning alone as prio (at which point I swapped out the mana glyph for ghost wolf glyph) that we had 2 good attempts to kill it on the 3rd one. If you do the 2nd set of tiles properly, the rest of the fight is basically easy mode. I'd just ghostwolf and take multiple runs to swipe the floor.

    At first I ran with EM for the ascendance (after a couple of ninja pulls where I ended up playing with my 4p T13 resto gear), but I ended up swapping that out for echo. While constantly being on the move or planning to move I noticed on the vod of my stream that I missed out on quite a few elemental blasts that I should 've cast. I'm curious if prime elementalist would've increased my dps (ended up with 99k #15 on wol). It's one of those fights where you are still dps'ing the dog that has the 90% less dmg taken, while you should've already swapped. So basically I think that prime ele could've made up for my faulty play, definitely for when I was running around in GW.

    Also had only 2 ascendances, since we often had threat issues on the pull. So I'd use it after the first set of tiles, and sit on my 2nd one until bloodlust was popped.

    All in all a fight where you can really make a big difference by using ghost wolf correctly.

    uploaded VOD of live stream ( so quality is likewise)
    Last edited by zenga; 2012-10-15 at 02:46 AM.

  12. #12
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    On our Stone Guard 10 man HC Kill I did 116k DPS (not on rankings because my guild keeps logs private). I used Elemental Blast and can definitely say its the better choice as long as you manage your movement. I would also say that Ghost Wolf is probably not the best choice, as your doing 0 DPS the whole time. You're likely better off using Unleashed Lightning and running around dpsing on the move and getting the tiles up slower than running super fast, getting the tiles up quick but doing no DPS for the duration.

    The way my guild did it was every cobalt phase the whole raid moved back too the crystals (destroying all traps on the way with Windwalk Totem). This meant we were all nearby the crystals when the tiles reset, every DPS then took a crystal and ran with it, instantly getting us up to 50 stacks, and our Blood DK would also take some stacks (he had 1 mob with him and would AMS the debuff damage anyway) getting us to 60, we also had a Holy Paladin take stacks too because of their high movement speed. 70 stacks basically instantly then more as the blood DK took more throughout the phase (Blood DK never stopped taking them, would dump them down then move back to crystal to take more) was enough for us. This meant I only had to do consistant movement once per reset, meaning I could pop Spiritwalker's Grace during this part every single time and never lose DPS from it.

    If you guild delegates you to take stacks by yourself then it *might* be worth it, but your whole raid will be doing substantially less DPS because you will have to spend a good minute to getting the whole raid enough stacks.

    If you struggle with target switching and end up hitting dogs on their own then PE will not help your DPS. If anything it will make it worse because its such an integral part of your DPS every second its on a bad target is a big DPS loss, much bigger than wasting one EB on it.

  13. #13
    Bloodsail Admiral zenga's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Undefetter View Post
    On our Stone Guard 10 man HC Kill I did 116k DPS (not on rankings because my guild keeps logs private). I used Elemental Blast and can definitely say its the better choice as long as you manage your movement. I would also say that Ghost Wolf is probably not the best choice, as your doing 0 DPS the whole time. You're likely better off using Unleashed Lightning and running around dpsing on the move and getting the tiles up slower than running super fast, getting the tiles up quick but doing no DPS for the duration.
    Very true, but at a certain point getting the kill becomes more important than personal dps. Our problem has and will always be meter whoring, and while sick of the wipes, going ghost wolf + rocket boots overcame the problem of links/frost boms/purple goo all over the place. So while I did 0 dps in that phase (for a good 20s during the fight I guess) it was - in my raid the proper choice. And I can imagine it being a valid option for other guilds that are stuck. In the end only a very limited amount of guilds manage to bring players that play perfect under every condition, try after try. And there I think ghost wolf glyph comes into play.

    Quote Originally Posted by Undefetter View Post
    The way my guild did it was every cobalt phase the whole raid moved back too the crystals (destroying all traps on the way with Windwalk Totem). This meant we were all nearby the crystals when the tiles reset, every DPS then took a crystal and ran with it, instantly getting us up to 50 stacks, and our Blood DK would also take some stacks (he had 1 mob with him and would AMS the debuff damage anyway) getting us to 60, we also had a Holy Paladin take stacks too because of their high movement speed. 70 stacks basically instantly then more as the blood DK took more throughout the phase (Blood DK never stopped taking them, would dump them down then move back to crystal to take more) was enough for us. This meant I only had to do consistant movement once per reset, meaning I could pop Spiritwalker's Grace during this part every single time and never lose DPS from it.
    Did you have chains/purple good and ice bombs? If 5 dps and 1 healer are linked then it becomes quite a pain in the ass to get the tiles going asap (all goes well, goo comes in the way, your mate goes left and you go right). I reckon some guilds who did have the AOE dog active (unlike us) and not the links are gonna have quite a different time next reset. We were during our wipes quite often in the event that we were simply unable to break the chains (to close to overloading, one had to re-tilem ...).

    Quote Originally Posted by Undefetter View Post
    If you guild delegates you to take stacks by yourself then it *might* be worth it, but your whole raid will be doing substantially less DPS because you will have to spend a good minute to getting the whole raid enough stacks.
    By 'yourself' is basically a bit exaggerated, as people would help where they can. But rather than 2 linked targets having to move to take a tile, I'd run an extra one (let me put it that I focussed mainly on the tiles). DPS wasn't really tight, as we killed it 1m40 before enrage.

    Quote Originally Posted by Undefetter View Post
    If you struggle with target switching and end up hitting dogs on their own then PE will not help your DPS. If anything it will make it worse because its such an integral part of your DPS every second its on a bad target is a big DPS loss, much bigger than wasting one EB on it.
    Yeah that is actually true, think I lost in total 3-4 casts to being on the wrong one (you know, doing a set of tiles, end up between the dog and the wall, while the taunt already took place). But yeah, PE is not really an option the way you describe it.

  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by zenga View Post
    Did you have chains/purple good and ice bombs? If 5 dps and 1 healer are linked then it becomes quite a pain in the ass to get the tiles going asap (all goes well, goo comes in the way, your mate goes left and you go right). I reckon some guilds who did have the AOE dog active (unlike us) and not the links are gonna have quite a different time next reset. We were during our wipes quite often in the event that we were simply unable to break the chains (to close to overloading, one had to re-tilem ...).
    Yes we had that set up. If we got chained together then both players just ran together. If you got chained too a healer (and that healer wasn't the prot paladin) then you wouldn't run to collect tiles, either someone else would run twice or you would run when Jasper was active (and thus chains do no damage). Its just about practicing running together, once you get used to it, its not that hard. I'm pretty sure ALL 10 man guilds had the same set up, not sure though.

    You shouldn't ever have one guy go left and the other right because you should delegate a direction for your whole raid to move in. ie Start at stairs where bosses are, every trap that spawns your whole raid moves in the direction of the other stairs. This way when a trap or purple ooze spawns you always run the same way because you have the same destination. Then, when the cobalt becomes active you destroy all traps (pick people not chained to do the ones too the sides, chained people can do the ones in the middle no problem) and all run back to the stairs by the boss (and by the crystals). This way your whole raid moves together so all traps go near to eachother (reducing wasted room space) and you never get the 'I ran left and he ran right' thing going on.


    Quote Originally Posted by zenga View Post
    By 'yourself' is basically a bit exaggerated, as people would help where they can. But rather than 2 linked targets having to move to take a tile, I'd run an extra one (let me put it that I focussed mainly on the tiles). DPS wasn't really tight, as we killed it 1m40 before enrage.
    If all the DPS are taking tiles anyway, running next to someone else who has crystal charges doesn't matter, they'd be there anyway.

  15. #15
    Bloodsail Admiral zenga's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Undefetter View Post
    You shouldn't ever have one guy go left and the other right because you should delegate a direction for your whole raid to move in. ie Start at stairs where bosses are, every trap that spawns your whole raid moves in the direction of the other stairs.
    ...
    If all the DPS are taking tiles anyway, running next to someone else who has crystal charges doesn't matter, they'd be there anyway.
    In theory I couldn't agree more. In reality it's more material for a Laurel and Hardy movie. Stuff like ... our lock placing a portal yesterday.

  16. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by zenga View Post
    In theory I couldn't agree more. In reality it's more material for a Laurel and Hardy movie. Stuff like ... our lock placing a portal yesterday.
    :P Gotta whip those noobs into shape bro!

  17. #17
    Bloodsail Admiral zenga's Avatar
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    Got feng down before the reset. Like undefetter said, this boss is great for ele shamans. I went with astral shift and elemental mastery however. Astral shift for when I had to stay out of the velocity with resonance. It puts a bit less strain on the healers. Ele mastery because we had for some reason unreliable transitions from P1 to P2: the goal was to shield the first set of adds, but we messed that up quite often. Elemental mastery would give me a cd for the first wave of adds, and ascemdamce would be up to lava beam the living shit out of the 2nd wave (the 2nd one we would dps, 3th or 4th actual wave). Ended up with 74.8k which ranked me #9, but definitely room for improvements in the bloodlust phase. Uploaded VoD from my live stream.

    And this is what you shouldn't do on Feng HC ... felt it was a good time to gain some mana back (total brain fart as I was nearly full). We ended up hitting enrage as the boss healed himself for not killing that wave. Got him down the next attempt though.
    Last edited by zenga; 2012-10-17 at 02:30 AM.

  18. #18
    Are you still able to use Reversal on Lightning Fist to stun the boss during Epicenter on heroic?

  19. #19
    Here's my PoV for Heroic Feng 10 Man - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hbQiP6vm3w

    I used astral shift, echo of the elements , healing tide and elemental blast. Also used the 4 piece tier 13 resto set for the pre-pull. Managed to pull 78k dps.

    At the moment I am running Echo + Elemental Blast, and stone bulwark totem for Heroic Gara'jal.

    Edit : Yes, you can reversal the lightning fists to stun the boss, we had fairly good boss damage uptime during that phase.

  20. #20
    Bloodsail Admiral zenga's Avatar
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    Gara'jal 10m hc:

    - Nature's guardian is great on this fight since we ran with a DK tank. The voodoo doll can hit like a truck, and it's hard to predict when exactly it's gonna happen in order to pop SBT proactive.
    - Echo is a clear winner for me since we can only factor in 2 ascendances. My raid would lust at the start, and I'd pop my 2nd ascendance whenever I came out of the spirit realm fully buffed. On certain tries I went 4-5 times into the spirit realm due to rng, meaning that it becomes a real hassle to use EM correctly.
    - I opted for healing tide totem as a direct cooldown for whenever I saw the raid in trouble. Ancestral guidances takes another global, but is definitely a viable alternative. And conductivity is a great alternative if you want to run with 2 healers only and want to turn yourself into a healing hybrid (but should be done in combination with unleashed fury imo)
    - Elemental blast is a no brainer for me because the elemental would follow you around on the adds if you'd port to the spirit realm, rather than staying up on the boss.

    As for glyphs:
    chain lightning is pretty useless as not a single time I saw more than 3 adds being grouped
    unleashed lightning was sometimes worth it, but I eventually decided to not use it (the spirit totem would drop quite often in an inconvenient place, on the raid/far away), but I agreed with our healers that if SWG was on cd, i'd make my way to the stacking point whenever I'd have an instant (instead of taking part into the aoe heals asap).

    My choice:
    flame shock for obvious reasons
    spirit walker's grace, since nothing else is really useful
    telluric currents, more a just in case

    On our kill, with 10s left to enrage I came out at 80k dps, which was exactly the same to what our spriest, boomkin and mage pulled (according to each his own log). Make sure you pop your 2nd stormlash when all those classes with an execute are going strong.

    All in all a fight I enjoyed. Not much you can do as an ele besides dpsing your tits off. The least stressful progress fight for me in quite a long time.

    Here is my PoV taken from my stream.
    Last edited by zenga; 2012-10-23 at 03:06 AM.

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