Grand Empress Shek'zeer 10 man HC help

[Fatemmet]

Hi all,

Long time reader of these forums and first time poster.

My guild has started progression on this lovely lady and we are struggling to make progress on the fight.

Our make-up for the fight is

Tanks
Blood DK
Brewmaster Monk

Healers
Holy Pally
Disc Priest
Mistweaver Monk
Resto Druid

DPS
Arcane Mage
Fire Mage
Affliction Warlock
Combat Rogue


Our basic problem is two-fold.

In phase one, we are often getting random deaths due to spike dmg. We take care of the corrupted dissonance field very quickly with both the debuffed person and our lock shielding himself in there. So we are reducing it that way.

Despite this, we still seem to spike quite randomly and die. I am making sure people are spread out enough to not stack the random damage but as I said, we just seem to take huge spikes from time to time.

Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated.

Our second problem comes in phase 2. Our tanks aren't exactly ideal for this fight. I am told block tanks are supreme on this fight.
We can get the first reaver in a trap but usually at this stage our healers are oom and someone dies.

My question is this: "Is it viable to do this phase given that we use a DK and Monk to tank?"

I'd really appreciate any help or advice anyone can offer.

Thanks for taking the time to read my post.

[Daerio]

How can 4 healers be oom by the first add phase, I feel like there's an issue there. My guess is they're using some inefficient heals, and it could be fixed by more appropriately assigning healing so that they aren't overlapping / overhealing as much.

[Fatemmet]

The ooming is caused by tank healing in phase 2.

I'm told that DK and monk are the worst tanks to have for this fight.

We enter phase 2 with plenty of mana, its just that healing the tanks totally wipes out the mana pools by the time we get the first trap and get to the "regen" phase.

We tend to lose the reaver tank (monk) at that point.

[bals]

we do dk and monk tank and 3 heal it.
monk picks up adds, make sure he has shuffle up. use tiger to tank one of the adds. mark one with skull and burn it down asap. Chain your major cds and get externals if needed. avoid using stuns until there's 2-3 left.
dk picks up 2 reavers + 1 windblade

[Fatemmet]

Thats some great advice, i'll see if our monk is at that and if not, i'll get him to start doing it.

[Purrberry]

With that advice on your add phase, i'd say your phase 1 (without knowing your specific cd rotation) could also use help as while it can be quite healing intensive at times, 4 healers is more than enough to handle that phase with everyone coming out of it close to full mana. A rotation I recommend without knowing specific monk cds:

First dissonance field, first set: druid pops tree form with about 15 seconds before first explosion while priest builds those spirit shells. The lifeblooms on entire raid + free instant regrowths constantly should control any spikey damage (especially with 2 other healers doing normal healing). Druid uses regrowths on spikes and lifeblooms all, spirits shells and first explosion is easy enough.

Second Dissonance field, first set: From what you are saying about using the lock to bring one down earlier... i'm not sure it's advisable. Having the tree form and spirits shells on the first one, everyone is easily topped off from the first explosion I feel it's almost easier for the second explosion to closely after as you have lingering effects from the first cds. But regardless of that, have your monk pop whatever it is that's similar to tranq for the second set and youre set.

First Dissonance, second set: Spirit Shells should be back up and use those with pally minors if you need it for this point. (Dont pop pally pet during this phase, it's much better used in add phase).

Second Dissonance, second set: Druid Tranq when the field is around 8 energy left. Tranq has a slight ramp up time so make sure he's using it 2-3 seconds before the explosion. At this point when druid pops Tranq Pally should use his mana ability that hurts healing, can't remember name right now, so that it's over and he's good to go by the time add phase starts.

Feel free to switch these rotations around or add any more that I'm missing. I'd recommend saving Disc Raid Bubble for add phase as well as pally pet. You will want to communicate as if the priest gets Cry debuff multiple times spirit shells get fucked so you may have to change first and second explosions because of it, but that's all stuff you can figure out easily. I'm guessing you already have a rotation of sorts down but this should prevent any spike deaths in first phase as those should never happen and help get into add phase with everyone pretty much full mana.

Some Add phase tips, find a stacking point between 20 and 40 yards from your Windblade tank. When they fixate we discovered their Sonic Blade ability has a 20 yard range and there were times where even ranged got insta-gibbed by dispatch + sonic blade so if you start over 20 you can kite easily and get the sonic blade to hit when the windblade doesn't have any stacks. The other thing if you aren't is everyone should be completely stacked and so the goo comes out and just instantly gets applied towards a trap. Once a trap is built move the stack point so that people can easily kite without getting the windblade in the already existing trap. One thing we did is trap a reaver right away. Get the druid to Vortex the windblade group and have typhoon ready as well as stuns as they will attack the trapped reaver but with all those ccs you can delay the reaver breaking out by quite a bit. That gives healers a lot of breathing room and lots of down time at this point. Once you get one trapped you can get healers to take turns Focus Potion. The reaver will break out but for us with only about 4-5 million and is easy enough to just burn at that point. Also make sure that people being focused by the adds still move away, they will only attack the trap but once the trap break, if they are focusing someone they will immediately switch to them.

None of what i've said is set in stone but those are the little things we used to get a kill earlier this lockout. And if you haven't heard, phase 3 is just a complete joke. If someone dies, even two people, on the second add phase, don't call a wipe. You can still get through phase 3 with a crippled raid as berserk timer shouldn't be an issue and all it takes are a couple people to be quick on dispels.

[Fatemmet]

Thanks for that, i'll get the guys in guild to read this and hopefully we can get it sorted.