10man progression. Elegon or Imperial Vizier Zor'lok

[Dust45]

Hello all! I suspect I know the answer to this question, but wish to poll the community anyway. My guild is 4/6 (for two weeks) in MSV. We are a mostly casual group, like so many, with some dedicated raiders and some new/casual raiders. At the moment, we easily down the first four bosses but failed miserably at Elegon on our first night. While there are a few problems with execution, I genuinely believe that, with the raiders I have, we will not be able to complete the encounter until we farm at least 2-3 more weeks of gear. This is due to low(ish) dps from some new members to the group who have not had a chance to farm any epics and due to the fact that even our best raiders are still only managing, not exceeding the dps and hps needed for the fight. I do not have a WoL parse (casual group) so you will just have to trust me.

I am in no way knocking our group. We 2 shot Spiritbinder for our first kill and 5 shot the Kings the same night. We are a good, mostly aware group. However, we all got a very late start and have only killed the 3rd and 4th bosses twice.

My question, then, is: Should we grind our faces off on Elegon? Is Imperial Vizier Zor'lok within reach even if Elegon is not? He has a higher gear level so I feel he would be more worth or time, but don't want to go in there and be faced with an even more "impossible" fight. Our third option is to just clear the first four in our first raid night (we raid twice a week, CASUAL!) and go for old content achievements the second. This seems like fun, but some of my raiders (myself in included) hate to miss out on upgrades. In particular, would Imperial Vizier Zor'lok be a good thing to work on in the sense that, if we can down him, the gear from him will make Elegon so much easier?

[The Boomking]

Oh yes, Zor'lok for sure!

My guild was just in the same position. Our dps was, and still is too low for doing Elegon, for some time. We decided to try and go HoF, and we got Vizier down on our second night. He's a lot easier than Elegon, and I'd say Blade Lord Ta'yak is, as well. We haven't killed him yet, but took the rest of the evening after our Zor'lok kill to practice him, and got to phase two a few times.

Good luck in your raids!

[SurrealNight]

We were stuck on Elegon and decided to give Zor'lok a shot and didn't get him down either. FINALLY got Elegon down last night. One advantage of getting Elegon down is you should be able to walk in and stomp Will easy.

For Zor'lok we found not having enough CD's for more than 3 Verve phases in the burn so we would eventually just melt to the unprotected one. DPS was a huge issue as no one but me seemed to figure out how to continue to DPS and dodge the discs. Tank being top DPS every pull is a bad sign and I think they are just struggling with all the movement required.

Coming from a fairly casual guild myself I can tell you that you'll constantly see people dying to discs for quite a few wipes unless they got it down while doing LFR. We went in before LFR was out but odds are your group may not be practicing this anyways. If your not progressing on Elegon it might be worth a shot (at least it's something different) but for us it was Elegon that went down first.

Also, make sure your tanks are practicing the "dance" on Will of the Emperor LFR, if they have that down 100% you should walk in and kill Will with no issues once Elegon dies.

[Nitros14]

Elegon seems easier to me, and definitely easier than Ta'yak.

If your DPS for Elegon is too low and you can kill Zor'lok/Ta'yak you're just doing something wrong on Elegon with energy charges or focii.

[DarkPhoenix]

Lol I was under the impression that you had to finish MSV to do HoF... I know which boss my guild will be doing this week :P haha

[Squirl]

Lol I was under the impression that you had to finish MSV to do HoF... I know which boss my guild will be doing this week :P haha

No, you just need to complete HoF to do ToES.

[Dust45]

Thanks for all the great responses!!! I do agree that our dps, from what people are saying, might be a bit too low for Zor'lok. At the moment, we can just barely push three protectors on Elegon (and that isn't every pull). With pots (we have been holding back in order to learn fight), a bit more awareness, and some more gear (plus I need to give our new raiders a pve pep talk), we should have the dps for Elegon. However, I think, once we hit that point, we will go after Zor'lok first due to higher ilvl.

[Ezekiah]

just out of curiosity, how many hours a week do you raid?

[Deja Thoris]

Elegon is the easier fight imo.

Zorlok is easy until p2 and then things will go tits up unless you have good dps. You have to take him from 40% to dead pretty quickly or things get overwhelming with all the abilities at play. It's definately a fun fight to learn though so even just going there for a change of scenery can't be a bad thing.

[Pasture]

Thanks for all the great responses!!! I do agree that our dps, from what people are saying, might be a bit too low for Zor'lok. At the moment, we can just barely push three protectors on Elegon (and that isn't every pull). With pots (we have been holding back in order to learn fight), a bit more awareness, and some more gear (plus I need to give our new raiders a pve pep talk), we should have the dps for Elegon. However, I think, once we hit that point, we will go after Zor'lok first due to higher ilvl.

You need to be getting only two protectors or your healers will be oom by the end of the fight. The majority of Zor'lok is easy, provided your raid doesn't fail at rings, but Force and Verve requires high dps also to ensure you don't get too many. Too many and you just run out of cooldowns.

[hashtags]

We were in the same boat. We had 4/6 on farm & were really struggling on elegon. We went in and downed Imperial after around 22 wipes. Most of the wipes were due to 1 dps dying to the rings every pull. After that was sorted we killed it quite easily.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

If you have the dps to get Elegon to 80% with two protectors, you will kill him within an hour of starting the boss. Zor'lok has a decent healer and movement check, if your dps aren't the best movers I would recommend Elegon and Will.

[Ranaas]

"If you have the dps to get Elegon to 80% with two protectors, you will kill him within an hour of starting the boss."

This ^^

If not , dont try to go vezier also ; you will get overwhelmed with last phase dmg because of no cooldowns. And "I think" you need to improve either player quality or gear quality or both of them to get more progress.

[Deleted]

If you have a capable disc priest then do Zor'lok. Equally if you have many hybrids (and hence many raid CDs) I would also do Zor'lok.

[Squirl]

"If you have the dps to get Elegon to 80% with two protectors, you will kill him within an hour of starting the boss."

This ^^

If not , dont try to go vezier also ; you will get overwhelmed with last phase dmg because of no cooldowns. And "I think" you need to improve either player quality or gear quality or both of them to get more progress.

Probably player quality, unless you're incredibly undergeared. My guild downed Elegon the first night it opened with everyone at ~463 ilvl (maybe slightly higher from a few 1% weps and DMF trinks). If your raiders aren't at least 463, they're not raid ready and need to be doing heroics. You don't need epics to kill N MSV.

Prepot, hero pot, flasks, food, and a raid comp that provides all the important buffs/debuffs is important as well. If you start logging (it's actually really easy), the people here can provide an informed analysis of your performace and strat. If individual members need improvement, post the log in a class forum here. People are usually nice and helpful unless something is entirely derpy.

Rather than choosing which boss to slam your face against next, get some feedback and kill both.

[Rorschachs]

Zorlok is pretty hard too. Elegon is the only challenging fight in normal mode MSV. On the other hand almost all HOF bosses will be challenging for your guild probably.

[Dust45]

just out of curiosity, how many hours a week do you raid?

Twice a week. About 3 hours the first night and 4 hours the second. A lot of that time (about an hour a night) is spent on break. We have smokers and mothers and people who just can't resist attacking horde at the summoning stone. XD

It's cool. Most of us have know each other for years so plenty to talk about.

---------- Post added 2012-11-12 at 11:23 PM ----------

Well, at the moment, we have the dps to get to 85.5% with THREE protectors (and some of that is problems with awareness and learning fight). Obviously, we might need to hold off on Zor'lok. We do, however, have an awesome disc priest (me! ^^) so maybe sooner rather than later.

[herpecin]

elegon requires high DPS and good execution.

Zor'lok requires people to avoid balls.

my team got a bit of a late start after MoP dropped and only got 4/6 before HoF dropped. spent about 3 nights total of attempts on elegon and the best we got was about 15%(but we were doing 2 healers and only had 6 stacks on the boss so we weren't close to killing him). spent a total of 2 hours on Zor'lok and killed him, the first attempt where we had all 10 people up going into P2 we killed him BTW.

only had a few pulls on blade lord buy we did manage to get him to 17% before we called it for the night.

[einsanity]

If you're confident in your healers I'd say go Zor'lok. We 2 healed our first night in there, and never had more than 3 Force & Verves during either the platform or final burn. Solid raid CD chaining will work wonders and shadow priests are especially valuable (halo + vampiric embrace). Past that, it's just make sure you can dodge the balls.

All that being said, Elegon is a far funner fight and worth putting some solid progression time into. I'm sure it will be a rewarding kill!

--edit--

after thinking about it for a bit, I would change my answer to Elegon. Like the above posters have mentioned, being able to clear MSV will make HoF that much easier, and frankly Elegon is more of an execution fight than anything. I would definitely recomend each of your DPS look into some of the tips and tricks that others of their class have found for maintaining optimal DPS on elegon and still efficiently managing their own focus orb.

[reflection]

I think Zor'lok is pretty easy - think he was dead in the 3rd try. The bigger problem will be the second boss. The enrage and the mechanics are pretty tough and for a first kill you'll need a very good try. Also you have to clear MSV normal mode to get into HoF if I remember correctly.